Ask the experts
Buying Business Travel quizzes industry authorities on the principal issues facing the sector
ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
How can you help take the stress out of visa applications? Alex Blyth talks to those in the know
THE GLOBAL ECONOMY is changing fast. To give just one indication of this transformation, by 2020, 57 per cent of urban Chinese consumers will be able to afford a car and small luxury goods – a sixfold increase on the number today. Consumers in Russia, India, Brazil, and a whole host of countries behind them, are
THE BUYER 48
Tricia Cunningham, travel supervisor at Weatherford
“WEATHERFORD PROVIDES a wide range of products and services to oil and gas drilling companies. We operate in 100 countries worldwide, including our global head office in Houston, Texas, so we make
many visa applications – this year so far we have made 430. “Many are to challenging regions. As well as Russia and Kazakhstan, we have a large number of travellers to West Africa and, in particular, Angola. Each of those locations presents its own challenges in terms of visa applications.
“So, for my department, ensuring smooth visa applications is vitally important. If a traveller is unable to arrive for an assignment, that can hold up a billion-dollar project – and that in turn can make it less likely that the oil or gas company will re-award the contract to us. In
short, visas are business-critical for us. “For Russia, the greatest issue is that it must be done via a complicated online form. Any mistakes result in the application being rejected and a fee charged for having it returned. So to avoid this we simply pay ATPI to complete
also entering the global market at an equally astonishing rate, and these changes present a host of opportunities for UK corporates, but just as many challenges, not least of which are visa applications. For any corporate with a significant number of travellers to emerging markets, the
variety, complexity and fluidity of embassy requirements is a headache at best, a critical business issue at worst. Here, four experts in the field of corporate visa applications share their advice on how to make the process as simple and straightforward as possible.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014
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