A few months ago it would have been hard to imagine a world
in which business travellers are writing online accounts of their airport and
flight experience in forensic detail, describing how frequently toilets are
cleaned, the provision of antiseptic wipes, how boarding patterns have changed
and how food is served onboard.
But that is the world in which we now exist and these have
all become points of immense interest.
“No one is crowding the line at
the gate. Boarding is done back to front. Fewer people are eating gooey nachos
in the waiting area or bringing smelly food on the plane. And everyone is
keeping their distance,” wrote Amex GBT’s Anne McElroy-Arnaud on LinkedIn this week.
“Everything is cleaner,
especially in the airplane… I got antiseptic wipes when boarding,” she
continued. “The bathroom I was seated next to was disinfected VERY
regularly even if no one had used it since the last cleaning.”
Introducing her comments, she said: “Today, we want to know if it's safe, tolerable or simply accessible to
travel,” and explained she was sharing her experience “for the common good”.
As Europe eases out of lockdown, many business travellers
and their employers are looking for assurances around the safety of business
travel before they begin hitting the road again.
There has
been much talk about how to instil traveller confidence, be it through enhanced
travel policy protocols, new duty of care and risk management measures or
suppliers’ new health and safety procedures.
One UK-based business travel manager in the R&D sector
said they had been absorbing precisely the sort of information shared by
McElroy-Arnaud – first-hand accounts of what business travel in a post-pandemic
world is actually like.
“We have a lot of apprehensive travellers out there who may be anxious about
taking their first trip,” they said. “But if someone has taken that first step
and can share that experience and as a result help rebuild our industry, then
that is a good thing.”
Suppliers
in all sectors have established new hygiene protocols and TMCs are clamouring
to issue new advice and collate information pertaining to travel regulations,
procedures and supplier standards.
BCD Travel
published a Back to Travel guide this week, Clarity has issued a ten-step guide
to restarting business travel and Gray Dawes has produced a Traveller Toolkit,
to name just a few examples. And Amex GBT’s CEO Paul Abbott recently spoke
about the need for ‘clarity and consistency’ in building trust and confidence as
the business travel industry creaks back into action.
While all the
talk of ‘the restart’ is encouraging – and of course it’s also in suppliers’
interest to get people moving again – converting positive sentiment into
international business travel is currently being stymied by vague governmental
advice.
For traveller
confidence is only one part of an equation that paves the way for business
travel to really take off. As consultancy Festive Road expounds, only when
traveller confidence, company confidence and government approval align does
business travel really become permissible.
Gavin
Sanderson, head of client development at Gray Dawes travel, says: “We need the
airlines and governments to work together and provide solutions to ensure
travellers feel safe and hassle free on their journeys, alongside mitigating
the risk of quarantine at either destination or upon arrival back into country
of origin.”
He
continues: “Governments across the globe need to come together to provide
assurance that measures are in place at border control, ensuring protection
from importing the virus. This would act as such a great springboard to
relaunch traveller confidence.”
Having implemented a
much-maligned 14-day quarantine requirement for arrivals in the UK, the UK
government now plans to announce a number of destinations with which it will
approve ‘air bridges’ or ‘travel corridors’, as well as establishing a ‘traffic
light’ system for quarantine purposes. However, the delay in announcing these
countries and particular measures has proved frustrating.
As travel manager Michael McSperrin wrote on Twitter,
accompanied by exemplary use of the face-palm emoji: “The drip feed of this information is utterly pointless! Are they trying
to build the suspense or something? The detail is what is key to allow travel
businesses and travellers to do anything!”
The European Union has acted, meanwhile,
opening its borders on 1 July to citizens of 15 non-EU countries deemed to be ‘safe
travel destinations’ – although there is a caveat.
The countries include Australia,
Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, South Korea, Thailand and, pending a
reciprocal agreement, China. Notable exclusions – despite intensive lobbying –
include the US and Russia, with political wrangling bound to ensue.
It took diplomats five days to
decide on the destinations, during which there was disagreement among member
nations about which countries should be included.
To an outsider, the decision-making
had all the hallmarks of the Eurovision Song Contest’s geopolitical back-scratching: the
BBC reported that Balkan and Eastern European states argued for Georgia’s
inclusion, that Hungary lobbied for Serbia, and Spain for Morocco, among other
gestures of support.
In the first instance, however, destinations
were selected based on three factors: a low Covid-19 infection rate (fewer than
16 in every 100,000 people), a downward trend of cases, and adequate social
distancing measures.
Here’s that caveat: the European
Council’s final list is not legally binding and EU members can act on it as
they please. According to the BBC, France will open to all 15 countries in the
next few days, while the Czech Republic will only open to eight of the 15.
Meanwhile, an announcement on the UK’s forthcoming ‘travel
corridors’ and ‘traffic light’ system is expected this week when FCO advice
will simultaneously be reviewed. In the meantime, ‘clarity and consistency’ does
not seem an immediate prospect and the green light for business travel will
have to wait on amber a little longer.