With Easter behind and the summer holiday rush approaching, Belgium’s Foreign Ministry used a 18 April 2026 press briefing to implore citizens to “know before you go”. Joris Salden, Director-General for Consular Affairs, told reporters that 42 % of consular emergencies last year involved travellers who had not read official advice or registered their itinerary. The ministry’s new ‘Smart Start Summer’ campaign therefore centres on three calls to action: consult the Diplomatie.be travel advisories, enrol journeys on the ‘Travellers Online’ portal, and verify passports and visas at least six weeks in advance. Officials highlighted real-world examples: families stranded in Florida after hurricane evacuations, and backpackers in Thailand facing €20,000 medical bills without insurance. The campaign’s social-media clips feature QR codes linking directly to destination-specific visa information—timely, given looming Schengen changes such as the Entry/Exit System (EES) and the ETIAS travel authorisation late next year. For corporates, the guidance doubles as a compliance reminder. Business-traveller incidents—from lost laptops to hospitalisations—trigger sizeable duty-of-care costs when staff omit consular registration. HR teams are advised to integrate the ministry’s API (released last quarter) into travel-approval tools so that itinerary data can flow automatically to Travellers Online, with employee consent. Insurance brokers also welcome the push: they note that only 64 % of Belgian leisure travellers and 71 % of short-term assignees buy adequate cover, despite rising healthcare costs in key growth markets such as the United States and the Gulf. The ministry will run pop-up desks at Brussels Airport every Friday in May, offering on-the-spot passport-validity checks and advice on the EES facial-capture kiosks that became mandatory on 10 April. Companies planning June incentive trips or July project kick-offs abroad should circulate the campaign materials now to avoid last-minute disruptions.
Source: The Brussels Times
