Travel in the best of times can be a risky business. But
with conflicts occurring around the world, political elections, cyberattacks on
the rise and a perception of increased crime in certain destinations, it’s more
important than ever for corporate travel managers and their travelers to be
aware of risks and what steps they can take to help mitigate them.
BTN sat down with Frank Harrison, regional security director
of the Americas for World Travel Protection, at last month’s Global Business
Travel Association convention in Atlanta to get advice on what business travelers
and managers need to watch out for today.
When asked about geopolitical unrest and uncertainty, Harrison
said that the best way to prepare for potential issues is “you forecast
and you contingency plan—and no plan ever survives first contact,” he
said. “What planning does is it allows an organization and individuals to
be prepared, trained. They’re expecting they know how to react, and you can
pivot and deal with an event as it’s unfolding versus just standing there with
your hands on your hips going, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ ”
Organizations should update their crisis management
training, he added, review site-level software and the local incident
management team. “In the post-Covid environment, I ask organizations, ‘When
was the last time you ran a crisis management test? When was the last time you
had your emergency incident management team sitting in a room going through the
processes?’ This is the opportunity for organizations to actually get back into
doing their CMTs and their IMTs and make sure that they have a plan.”
For travelers, it’s important for them to get their
pre-travel information and intelligence reports on where they are going, so
they understand the risk environment they’re going into, particularly depending
how a person self-identifies, Harrison said.
“A person asked a few days ago about someone with an
Israeli passport traveling from Asia to Europe and flying routes that take them
over countries that if the plane had to land, there’d be a risk,” he said.
“My comment was, ‘You know that you have a risk from a duty-of-care
standpoint potentially. Would you not want to then choose a route that takes
you from Asia through North America to Europe?’ Yes, it’s a longer route, but
the chances of arbitrary detention or worse are now manageable.”
Areas of Perceived Crime and Safety Concerns
When asked about perceived levels of crime and safety in
certain destinations, Harrison acknowledged there are major cities throughout
the United States, Canada and to a certain extent Mexico where people are
living in mass displacement centers. “That creates an environment that if
somebody has a bias of their personal safety, then they’ll see a threat
environment,” Harrison said. “Yes, there are issues around mental
health, there are drug issues, but if you’re going into a downtown environment,
[usually] it’s in a very concentrated area. Do you need to be going into that
area? If not, why are you going? It’s being aware of the locations you’re going
to, understanding the environment and then understanding that with a few simple
steps you can keep yourself safe.”
Harrison said that his company’s app system as well as
others in the field have an alerting feature that if a person goes into a part
of a city where there’s an encampment, they’ll get an alert, a notification of
where it is and a graphical display that can show how to avoid it.
“The key to any program is location management,”
Harrison said. “Prior to the pandemic, a company would issue somebody with
a set of plane tickets [and they] wouldn’t think about it until they got to
their destination. Nowadays, with the complexities of risk, globally,
organizations have a duty of care to know where people are at any stage during
their travel. It’s always a challenge of getting employees to adapt location
management tools, travel apps, because of the perception of their being
monitored. The reality is, those apps, regardless of who the provider is,
they’re very powerful and beneficial tools to provide to travelers because it
allows them to understand the environment that they’re traveling within.”
Harrison, however, also noted that the increased costs to
travel have had a direct effect on corporate travel budgets. “The direct
correlation is a lot of the measures that were involved in travel approval of
programs got scaled back because of the cost incurred with actual travel,”
he said. “There are organizations that as a direct result of [increased] travel
costs have reduced their duty of care programs.”
Personal Device Risks
Not that many years ago, most people thought of their mobile
phones as a device for communicating. Now we have our boarding passes on our
phones, our digital IDs, corporate email, even wallets.
“This device now is more important to protect,”
Harrison said. “From a cyber standpoint, what pre-pandemic we would’ve
talked about as personal risk, personal safety, we also now have to focus on
our devices.” He suggests using a VPN and not to go onto any public Wi-Fi
systems. He also avoids hotel servers and instead will work off his phone as a
hotspot.
Harrison found himself under a cyberattack about three years
ago, and “it was an eyeopener,” he said. Now, for banking or anything
financial, he uses a 17-character password and changes them every 14 days.
“It sounds excessive, but that’s me,” he said. “If somebody
wants to change them every 28 days or every two months, that’s their personal
choice. If you ask most people right now, for most folks, they set a password
and they forget about it, right?”
Tech-Related Travel Services
Rideshare programs and alternative accommodation providers with
local hosts, like Airbnb, might be safe in most of North America, “but if
a traveler is going to a destination they haven’t been to before, they need to
understand if those types of services are considered acceptable in that
destination,” Harrison said.
He gave an example of parts of Mexico having issues with
Uber coming in and the taxi unions do not want them there. “There’s
violence against the Uber drivers of vehicles and their customers,”
Harrison said. “There are parts of Europe where Uber is not accepted. Taxi
drivers will have people watching, and they will try to ambush those Uber
drivers if they are anywhere near a designated licensed taxi area.”
In the end, travel managers need to understand their
travelers—what their capabilities are, their aptitude around travel, the risks associated
with who they are as a human being, the destinations they are going to and how
those factors can become enablers or barriers to them having a successful
journey, Harrison said.
“You look at business travelers that are going out, and
there are parts of the world right now where normal business activities can be
a breach of customary practice or customary law or cultural norms,”
Harrison added. “Organizations need to understand before they go out, that
they’re not going into an environment where they’re potentially doing something
that’s going to put their people in harm’s way. … It’s about empowering them
with knowledge and then supporting [them] if a traveler says they don’t want to
go because of personal safety. Work with that organization so there is no
punitive retribution to that traveler for refusing to go. But if they do go,
have the support mechanisms around them that if there is an issue or they have
a question or concern, they can get the support they need.”
