Travel security: Risk factor

Felicity Cousins talks to the experts who help keep safe those business travellers who regularly head to the world’s riskier destinations

OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS the travel industry has witnessed some extraordinary events, from natural disasters to political uprisings and terrorist attacks. These situations, along with the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act (which came into force in 2008) have meant traveller security has been at the top of the agenda for some time. But what if the risks are not one-off and you are sending your travellers to high-risk destinations every day?

This is a much broader issue than travel managers buying and arranging travel. For example, in an oil or gas company there will be many departments involved in the building up of policy and guidelines for risk areas. Employee health and safety, security, HR and legal are all involved, and companies working in these sectors are highly experienced in dealing with the risks, often using travel management companies (TMCs) and security companies, as well as their own in-house security teams.

BE PREPARED

One of the travel managers Buying Business Travel spoke to works for a large Europe-based oil company.

He uses the company intranet to keep travellers informed of their destinations pre-trip. “We have a pretty big intranet, which all our offices around the world can access, and we have a page for each country informing users of travel information like visas and practical advice” he says. “Every time someone travels they are instructed to check the intranet and contact the local office in that country.”

Local knowledge and experience is invaluable when organising travel to high-risk regions. Paulo Correia is area manager for Angola at Wings Travel Management. “Travel managers in the oil and gas industry should liaise internally first because they have a lot of quality health and safety security managers, and their own security experts on the ground, as well as contacts at local embassies,” he says. “Their travellers will have a huge amount of knowledge too – some may have had a two or three year contract in Angola.”

The Wings operations team works with a product called Go-info, which consolidates destination news and information, and updates the team regularly so that if there is an incident, clients can be warned.

Amanda Stranack, event management director at business services company Grass Roots, explains how the oil and gas sector often work closely with Grass Roots’ teams and put them through the companies’ own health and safety training. “In oil and gas [travel managers] tend to have strong ties with the security team and health and safety, so they have their own internal procedures,” she says.

Planning ahead is imperative in risk destinations. Travellers will often be moved around in armed shuttle buses, from the airport to the hotel. “You can’t just show up – you really have to plan it and the local office needs to know you are coming,” says the oil company travel manager.

TAKE CONTROL

Because the risks are so big in certain areas of the world there is no messing about when it comes to traveller security. HRG’s client management director Susan Lancaster says one client in the oil and gas sector has given its top priority as traveller security and safety, followed by traveller wellbeing and, after that, cost control, CO2 emissions and so on.

“The systems in place for booking and managing travel to these areas are strict,” she says. “If there is a need to go to high-risk countries, they are flagged up within the booking system. Sometimes a client will make their employee go through a vetting process and they will provide us with an authorisation code for the trip.”

Managing director of TMC Egencia, Jonny Shingles, says of its security product Egencia Traveller Tracking: “It captures the most up-to-date information, but you still need backup.

First, people make contact with base and, second, they have specific high-risk country reports from country intelligence – effectively a traffic light or warning system, so if Iraq was being visited this would alert the relevant security manager.”

The oil company travel manager explains how he controls travel and bookings to these destinations: “No one is allowed to book air tickets outside approved airline policy – we will get a report saying if they do – but since 9/11 we’ve had 98 per cent of people keeping to policy.”

FLIGHTS AND HOTELS

The European Commission has a list of airlines banned from operating in European airspace, but what about further afield? Chris Pouney is founder of Severnside Consulting, a business travel specialist, and has clients in the oil and mining sectors. He regularly advises on travel to west Africa, the Middle East, China and South America.

He says: “If you are travelling around rural Russia or some parts of Africa you sometimes haven’t got a choice. If you are, for example, travelling from Congo to Nigeria then a lot of companies will look at chartering their own aircraft.”

However, the recent fatal crash of the charter plane carrying major league Russian hockey team Lokomotiv shows that there is no way to take out risk altogether.

The oil company travel manager points out the flight is only one concern. “You then have to think about how to get the traveller from the airport to the hotel, and we have local teams check out the security of the hotels,” he says.

“There may be a nice property somewhere but it won’t be accepted in our programme because it may be in the wrong neighbourhood.”

There is a risk of kidnapping in the oil and gas sector and, as a result, there are strict accommodation policies, with some companies choosing to house their employees in guarded compounds rather than hotels. Travellers also sign documents showing they agree with their company’s procedures, when travelling to high risk areas so the company is not liable for an incident if the traveller ignores protocol.

REPORTING AND TRACKING

Pre-trip reporting can show who is travelling where, which flights they are booked on and where they are staying. This is one argument for funnelling all your bookings through one central provider – to capture all the data. Sabre’s Traveller Security product offers risk information, traveller tracking, group email and texting, and risk reporting – so, for example, if an airline is booked but there is no hotel booked, this will be flagged up.

However, the data captured is only as good as the data entered, so if a traveller goes off policy and books off the GDS, then they can’t be tracked when an incident occurs.

Egencia Traveller Tracking was launched in partnership with Red24 in response to the volcanic ash cloud crisis, which caused unprecedented travel chaos in 2010. The integrated Traveller Tracking tool means that all clients can log on and see where their travellers are at any one time anywhere in the world.

HRG’s Lancaster points out that in a crisis everyone has to work together. “There is no one organisation that can offer one solution – there is no one supplier, which can provide the full service.”

COPING IN A CRISIS

Wings Travel’s Correia acknowledges the significant threat of kidnapping for workers in sectors such as oil and gas or NGOs. He says, in the event of a kidnapping, “the best thing a traveller can do is follow their instructions, as they are usually heavily armed. Kidnapping is generally for money and the kidnappers would contact the company and then the security experts would step in.”

Egencia’s Shingles says companies should also look at travel patterns when frequently going to high risk destinations and change them occasionally to reduce a planned attack on employees.

“Look at the travel habits of your travellers, such as people staying in the same hotel and arriving on the same flights,” he says. “If you have good data, you can access this, and a good security manager will change the pattern.”

The oil company travel manager points out there are other risks when sending travellers away on business. “Kidnapping of oil and gas employees is a common security threat but there is also crime in general. There is always an element risk involved when going to these places – you cannot eliminate risk.”

Another risk is a traveller falling ill or getting injured. Stranack at Grass Roots explains: “We did an event in Beijing recently and we were using a variety of locations, so we had paramedics with us at all times as we were away from the main hospitals.”

TRIED AND TESTED

Severnside Consulting’s Pouney says having a strategy in place is one thing, but actually making sure it works, and learning from any mistakes during an incident, is quite another.

“We have designed and changed travel management policies and process around one incident at one time,” he says. “But what happens if there are multiple incidents in different places? You need to make sure your processes are there to manage that.”

He adds that security processes should be tested to check they work. “As a travel manager, if you have a plan, you should test your plan – you should look at the robustness and you should measure the effectiveness of it.”