On 24 September 2026, The TRIP Group’s Travel Risk Management Conference brought together security, HR, mobility, insurance and legal leaders in London for a full day on how organisations protect people who travel and work in complex environments. Sicuro Group sponsored the event and took the stage for one of the day’s headline sessions: “Operating Through Conflict: Lessons from the Middle East.” Rafal Hyps, CEO of Sicuro Group, and River Jangda, Commercial Operations Director, presented what our teams learned coordinating a real Gulf-wide departure operation earlier this year, and what it changed about how we advise clients now.
The TRIP Group runs the UK’s leading travel risk management conference, drawing practitioners from finance, energy, government, NGOs, media and more to compare notes on duty of care, traveller safety and crisis preparedness. It’s one of the few rooms where security directors, HR leaders and General Counsel are working through the same questions side by side, which made it the right audience for what we wanted to say.
What the session covered
The talk walked through the 28 February–12 March 2026 Gulf crisis from the inside: what actually happens in the first 72 hours when a region becomes unstable, and why “stay or go” — the question behind almost every decision our clients made during those two weeks — is rarely as simple as it sounds.
A few of the honest points we made to the room:
- We had no special insight into how the conflict would unfold. The indicators we monitored, airspace status, ground logistics, embassy advisories, foreign ministry guidance, and what local businesses and residents were actually doing, were publicly available. We watch them systematically; that’s the whole advantage.
- Rumor outran fact. Claims about airport and border closures circulated on WhatsApp faster than anyone could verify them, and some reached major media before the published record caught up. As one HR lead managing people in the region told us at the time: “Whoever sees it on screen thinks it’s a lot worse than what it is.” Separating actual risk from the volume of coverage reaching employees became a job in itself.
- Most people who could leave chose to stay. Of the population affected, the larger share remained in the region. For a resident workforce, departure isn’t a quick trip home, it’s displacement. That reframes what “success” means: our role was to verify the real picture with each client before acting, and in many cases the right call was to stay put.
- Confidence came from preparation, not foresight. The clients who navigated the crisis with the least friction were the ones with pre-positioned vehicles, commercial terms and authentication protocols already signed, funding pre-agreed, and a single named decision-maker, settled in peacetime, not negotiated mid-crisis.
- Coming back is its own operation. Re-entry isn’t one decision; it’s a sequence, gated by conditions like ceasefire status, resumed consular services, and reopened schools and banking, with very different timing for a solo operations lead versus a family with school-age children.
The numbers behind it
Sicuro’s Global Security Operations Centre in Dubai ran continuously through the entire event. Across the operation, we supported 4,000+ individuals and coordinated 50+ completed ground movements across the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Iraq. Market cost per person for a road-plus-flight departure ran from roughly $2,300 to $9,000 depending on route and vehicle type, modest figures next to the cost of unplanned business interruption, which for most affected organisations ran considerably higher than the departure itself.
Four things we’re now advising clients to fix
The session closed with what we’d tell any organisation to prioritise before the next event, not after:
- An actionable plan with clear accountability: not a 100-page document, but something someone can act on immediately.
- Agreed triggers, decided in advance: know what you’re monitoring, how, and what happens when a threshold is met.
- Vendors, contracts and funding pre-agreed: stress-test capability now rather than discovering gaps mid-crisis.
- Business continuity planned alongside crisis response: who stays, where they work from, and on what basis people return.
Where this fits
If your organisation doesn’t yet have an actionable crisis and evacuation plan with defined triggers, our Travel Risk Management team can walk you through what “good” looks like, including a free ISO 31030 self-assessment if you’re not sure where the gaps are. You don’t need a security background to start; you need fifteen minutes and a clear picture of what’s already covered.