At Cornerstone Safety Group, we support members as their participants navigate common travelers’ illnesses. Without the proper preparation and care, these illnesses can feel especially disastrous, especially for participants who are new to travel.

Below is some guidance we give members on how to identify common traveler’s illnesses, address them with your participants, and support when they inevitably appear during your trip or program.

It’s been a full year since Cornerstone Safety Group was formed. Along the way, we’ve learned powerful lessons, been able to support members during the most challenging of times, and are proud to say that we’re just getting started!

You know that being “on-call” is necessary for your travel business.

During peak season, your staff is in the field 24/7. They are constantly working to support participants’ wellbeing, perhaps operating in an unfamiliar environment, handling crises on the ground, and ensuring all the hard work you’ve spent planning your programs is delivered as designed. They’re likely stressed, looking to you for guidance on a variety of issues, and don’t “get away” from the group for personal time nearly enough.

When you’re looking for more staff, it’s prudent to consider where these individuals might be looking for YOU. Below, we’ve compiled a shortlist of some of the most popular training platforms where tour guides/directors/program leaders look to educate themselves and connect to operators like you.

Some of these organizations even offer the option to list last-minute staffing vacancies on their site or be included in an “emergency” mailing list to all their members - an ideal place to find floater staff in a pinch.

How do you consistently deliver safety briefings to your travel operator or tour operator staff? How do your program leaders embody your values through delivering safety information? Staff need tools and support to realistically deliver the required information in a memorable, clear, and value-rich manner. After all, there’s little point in delivering information to cover your liability if no one is paying attention.

Let’s address the challenge first - when and how the safety briefing can be delivered.

In a recent meeting, many Cornerstone members had questions about supporting seasonal staff with mental health. Particularly given that it’s Mental Health Awareness Month, we wanted to share some of the collective findings from these informal discussions.

With the additional complexity of entry and exit requirements for international travelers, gone are the days when we worried merely about passport expiration dates and the nuances of entry visas.

As participants navigate the evolving travel landscape, they’ll look to you for answers. It’s more important than ever to offer clear policies and resources for prospective travelers.

Today, we’re breaking down the basics to help you and your participants navigate entry and exit requirements with transparency and clear recommendations.

Cornerstone’s Executive Director, Dave Dennis, has been managing vendor relationships and performing vendor safety assessments for over a decade. He recently offered training and resources for members to discuss the following: How is best-in-class vendor vetting performed? How do you manage gaps in aligning expectations, policies, or insurance coverages globally? How do organizations protect themselves from lawsuits (proactively)?

The solution: Thorough and consistent vendor vetting processes.

As an experiential education or travel operator, you’re surely well-versed in incident response. Do you and your organization have a clear plan of action for how you respond to emergent, unstable events?

When a crisis occurs, your organization relies on your response plan, and the individuals responsible for each function, to act accordingly. Prepare today by following these guidelines for developing a Crisis Response Team.

At Cornerstone Safety Group, we’re honored to have industry leaders as our volunteer advisors and thought partners. Our advisors across a wide array of disciplines provide perspective, guidance, and industry insights to our staff and members. Throughout this blog series, we’ll be introducing some of our advisors and learning more about how the travel industry captured their attention. This March, we’re joined by Mark Vermeal!

Cornerstone is founded on the belief that protecting human lives is not intellectual property, but a shared responsibility. We believe that knowing where human safety fits within your organization and having actionable processes to navigate complex situations is paramount to operational success.

At Cornerstone Safety Group, we’re honored to have industry leaders as our advisors and thought partners. Our advisors across a wide array of disciplines provide perspective, guidance, and industry insights to our staff and members. Throughout this blog series, we’ll be introducing some of our advisors and learning more about how the travel industry captured their attention. This March, we’re joined by Biama Charles!

At Cornerstone, our members have the unique opportunity to bring relevant challenges to the table and work together with peer organizations to create solutions. As we adapt to the next evolution of the pandemic and what that means for our member organizations, one such topic was brought to the table early in 2022: reintroducing homestay experiences.

To make Cornerstone meetings and trainings beneficial for all participants, we ask that attendees abide by the following etiquette. When we follow these norms, the value of each session increases and attendees are more likely to make peer connections. In return, we at Cornerstone will abide by the best practices and expectations set forth below, as event organizers.

I recently had a conversation with one of the Cornerstone community members discussing "gut feelings" about Omicron and how this might impact the progress and optimism for international programming in 2022. While there's no true answer to this question, it got me thinking about what we could and should be doing given our experiences over the past two years.

We know that our community, industry leaders like you, are working hard to make the right decisions for your programming. With that in mind, we sat down this week with Cornerstone Co-Founder and Medical Director, Joshua Dubansky, MD, FACEP, to discuss the reality of the Omicron variant, the updated definition of “fully vaccinated,” and how to handle some of the most common situations our members and community face.

At Cornerstone Safety Group, we’re honored to have industry leaders as our advisors and thought partners. Our advisors across a wide array of disciplines provide perspective, guidance, and industry insights to our staff and members. Throughout this blog series, we’ll be introducing some of our advisors and learning more about how the travel industry captured their attention. This January, we’re joined by Doug Stevens!

Experiential education and travel-based programs offer an intensive, often life-changing learning experiences for both the participants and staff. During these programs, individuals are challenged personally as they reflect upon their core beliefs, encounter stressful travel and social situations, and confront some of our global society's greatest challenges.

Regular updates in our evolving industry are critical to Cornerstone’s mission to provide essential health, safety and risk management services for the travel and experiential education industries. As such, we tapped into the expertise of our Medical Director, Joshua Dubansky, MD, FACEP, to provide our community additional information about the Omicron variant.

At Cornerstone Safety Group, we’re honored to have industry leaders as our advisors and thought partners. Our advisors across a wide array of disciplines provide perspective, guidance, and industry insights to our staff and members. Throughout this blog series, we’ll be introducing some of our advisors and learning more about how the travel industry captured their attention. This December, we’re joined by Harry Alvarez!