Safe-xplore: A personalized Risk Navigation System enabling users to make confident decisions at home or while traveling

The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, especially the introduction to hybrid work culture, has shown millions of people how important and enriching traveling is and the little joys that it brings to life. As the world continues to feel the effects of COVID-19 with new variants, people across the globe are still looking for ways to explore different parts of the world and their own country while ensuring safety as well. Because let’s face the fact- be it as travelers or in our day-to-day lives, our safety and that of our loved ones is a basic and universal human need that we’d never compromise with. Moreover, with the reports of crime & social unrest surfacing in different parts of the world every now and then, people are seeking a robust Risk Navigation System to keep themselves well informed at all times. And that’s exactly why pre-departure planning and accurate awareness of destination risks are critical to ensure safety during intelligent leisure or business travel, both domestically and internationally.

Unfortunately, the existing travel risk intelligence (TRI), ratings systems & tools offer little to no accuracy as they are largely driven by anecdotes, arbitrary scales, and liability reduction concerns that can possibly lead to very bad assessments and decisions. Safe-xplore’s Personal Edition puts an end to this problem prevailing in the Duty of care industry for once and for all, by offering an accurate and personalized Risk Navigation System that enables users to make confident decisions at home or while traveling.

With so many people going out for a vacation amidst the festivities and even before that, one behavioral shift that the travel and hospitality industry has witnessed lately is that travelers across the globe aren’t necessarily looking to plan the tiniest of travel details themselves. Instead, some are seeking guided cultural experiences and subscription services that help them plan their getaway.

With the pandemic back on the rise, it might seem uncertain if people intend or plan to travel much in 2022. However, sentiment data gathered in partnership with Ipsos MORI from more than 10,000 adults aged 18-75 in five countries shows that the majority of respondents are indeed planning to get out to see the beautiful world next year whether within their own country or overseas.

But, when trying to make smart travel decisions, most people find themselves in a dilemma because of foggy or inaccurate perceptions about the risks they might face and the potential threats that might cause them harm. This leads to fear, anxiety, and poor everyday decisions.

Thankfully, two industry veterans have taken the baton in their hands to develop Safe-xplore- a revolutionary personal and travel risk rating tool, initially designed for corporate executive protection and intelligence teams securing Fortune 500 CEOs and key executives. But that’s not it, they have now released a light version that is going to be completely free to the general public.

How is SXPE different from other Travel Risk Intelligence platforms?

Safe-xplore’s Personal Edition is the most accurate and personalized risk rating platform to date, with age and gender-specific crime, accidents, and health incidents rates and ratios mapped for over 400 cities in the US, other global cities, and thousands of sub-national regions. Additionally, Safe-xplore provides age-gender specific COVID-19 risk estimates for nearest-available geographic regions updated on a daily basis for over 2500 US counties and 160+ nations. When it comes to risk mitigation, personalized data and insights are more important than ever, simply because of the fact that a 22-year-old male traveler has very different risks than a 55-year-old female traveler. Thus, it is high time that people understand the limitations and built-in errors of the legacy nominal and ordinal scales when applied to personal risks like accidents or violent crime. And now, there is plenty of research to show that many open-source and commercial travel risk information products are plagued by severe bias, noise, and methodological flaws, offering nothing more than the illusion of communication.

SXPE not only shows the destination’s risk of violent crime victimization compared to the home city but also the current COVID-19 mortality risk compared to other diseases or causes (presenting risks in relative terms to familiar ones increases the efficacy of the message) for the traveler’s specific demographic characteristics. While this tool is only in its first version, several additional locations and features are expected to be added in the coming months. The app is designed as a powerful awareness and decision-support tool for those who love to travel for leisure or who travel frequently because of work, such as flight crews, sports teams, and salespeople.

Safe-xplore’s personal edition enables every user to have access to the same data and information developed for the most advanced personal and travel risk intelligence platform used by executive protection teams for the world’s top CEOs and Ultra High Net Worth individuals. Now, this is something no one would like to miss out on because while there are countless travel-related apps that one might want to try, Safe-xplore is an app that one actually needs in the current geo-political scenario.

Safe-xplore works like a guardian angel where users can see personalized and hyperlocal risk scores updated daily along with critical safety alerts, tips, and best practices to keep safe & sound. What’s more- users get real-time access to personalized COVID-19 metrics from anywhere in the world and can easily go through an in-depth analysis of which crime, accidents, and health risks are more likely to impact their life, based on their age, sex, and location.

Speaking about the disruptive proposition of Safe-xplore’s Personal Edition and the major behavioral shift with regards to traveling amidst the pandemic, Filippo Marino, Founder & CEO of Safe-xplore, said, “The COVID-19 pandemic has made many people around the world increasingly aware of the motivated reasoning and bias influencing our risk perception, judgment, and decision-making, and more thoughtful about personal risks and safety – be it health, crime, or accidents. The first and the most effective step to make safer and smarter risk decisions is to ‘calibrate’ our judgment of what is likely to injure or even kill us. This turns out to be a liberating and empowering exercise, and Safe-xplore is the first app specifically developed to improve what we call safe-esteem.”

It is worth taking note that another COVID-era behavior that may stay with travelers, especially as new variants are found, includes determining where to stay and what locations to visit based on the latest SOP’s issued by a business or destination. And let’s face the facts, cleanliness can equate to traveler safety and public health in many ways, big and small. And under the given conditions, pre-planning and planning one’s travel becomes very critical. According to the survey by Ipsos MORI, 17% of Americans surveyed currently subscribe to travel-related paid subscription programs or services, and another 23% suggested that while they don’t currently subscribe to such a service now, they would consider doing so in the future.

Clearly, the way we once visited the world, booked hotels or tours, and dined at restaurants has changed, maybe forever. The aftereffect of this will most likely factor into our travel decision-making for years or decades to come. With Safe-xplore’s Personal Edition, users will be able to calibrate risk perception and judgment in a better way, ultimately developing a more acute and realistic awareness of valuable versus useless or even dangerous data or insights.