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Oil and gas
consideration as employees’ safety was top of the list – even though the incident had nothing to do with the company’s operations.”
RISING COSTS
While it is clear that duty of care increasingly overrides all other considerations for oil and gas companies, particularly when they are affected by major incidents, the price of travel will always be at the forefront of buyers’ minds. Reports, such as Carlson Wagonlit Travel’s 2014 Travel
“Not being prepared is simply not an option to customers when the call comes”
When energy workers are affected by a crisis, the importance of traveller tracking becomes paramount. Some companies are giving their travellers to what are potentially high-risk areas Smartling mobile tracking devices, which connect to a satellite network and feature an emergency button. According to HRG director Susan
Lancaster, oil and gas companies can change their travel plans even for incidents not directly affecting their operations, such as the shopping mall terrorist attack in Nairobi last year. “One of the crew changes was due to transit through Nairobi with crew members coming in from all parts of the world,” says Lancaster. “But because of the shopping mall incident, the company’s head of security decided that crew members had to be diverted via different airports. Cost was not a
Price Forecast suggests that overall rates across the world will be rising – albeit moderately – this year.
FCM sales director Graham Ross
says: “Travel budgets are definitely going up. This is due to a combination of growth in the sector, hence more travel, and the rise in the cost of travel, often because travel is at short notice, so fares are more costly. Predictions for the future of the industry look very promising and travel will rise accordingly.” Other TMCs point to the diversity
of travel arrangements needed to get to far-flung installations and facilities that cannot be reached through commercial airlines and, instead, require some element of charter flights. ATPI’s Knights adds: “The vast majority of our customers are broadly budgeting mild cost increases on like-
PUTTING TOGETHER A GLOBAL PROGRAMME
Ryan Taylor, global travel manager for oil and gas service provider Sparrows Group, is in the process of creating a global travel programme for the Aberdeen-based company
“CURRENTLY WE ARE GOING through the RFP [request for proposal] process to find one TMC – at the moment we work with 14 across the group. The global tender went out to six TMCs. “We have 2,500 employees across the world in the UK, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Australia, and our annual travel budget is in excess of £10 million. “The biggest challenge is creating an internal
travel department that can work with the new global TMC. Our priorities are reducing costs, duty of care and keeping transaction costs to a minimum. We want to take advantage of block buying with our own route deals. “We are looking at technology to get a
strong online booking capability – this would be for our general corporate travel between offices, because offshore and marine travel cannot be booked online. “Alongside the TMC, we are also tendering for a security provider to offer in-country support, including travel tracking as well as pre-trip information, such as online health webinars – malaria is an issue in West Africa, for example. “We would hope to appoint both the TMC and the security company in March, so we can start rolling out the global programme over the summer.”
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CASE STUDY
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