Traveller safety is the second highest priority for travel buyers after cost control. 71 per cent also say that being able to locate travel- ling employees is now a priority, compared to 65 per cent during the previous year.


Source: American Express Global Business Travel 2014 Barometer


A quarter of companies do not have a traveller risk management strategy in place and nearly half of those (11 per cent) do not intend to introduce such a plan “in the foreseeable future”.


Source: Business Travel Show


choose to book travel in a way that is not easy to pick up through management tools. “More clients are mandating the use of TMCs in order to capture the data,” says HRG’s Meyer. “There seems to be a trend for more compliance although it is difficult to measure this.” The next logical stage to improve travel-


ler tracking, says Click Travel managing di- rector Simon McLean, is through GPS on their mobile devices – which could then be combined with itinerary data. “This would enable us to track them in between itinerary points, such as in the car on the way to the airport,” says McLean. “But we’ve got an emotional hurdle to get over before that becomes a reality. People are generally still wary of that level of tracking.” Charles Brossman is senior director of global travel risk management at FCM. He says: “Using GPS tracking can help a company when communications may be a challenge and a traveller may be hundreds of kilometres away from where they arrived just days before. Such technology can be implemented in many different ways, based upon policy or company culture, such as on-request only, or daily check-in,


“We’ve got an emotional hurdle to get over before GPS tracking becomes a reality”


same flight. “If you have four people going on the same flight including the CEO and CFO, then staff might start asking: ‘Where are they going?’” explains Knights. “If you do it in a block way, that’s probably fine for 99 per cent of employees. But you might want to ‘red-ring’ a group of people and do it separately for them. This is something I’ve flagged up to customers that they have rarely considered.”


or check-in only when travelling to specific destinations.”


Using GPS is not the only the option for


improving tracking – American Express Global Business Travel has introduced a new ‘card swipe’ service in the US, which integrates travellers’ use of their Amex corporate cards with their itineraries to pinpoint their locations in an emergency. The TMC plans to extend this service to other countries “in the future”. Adam Knights, group sales director at


ATPI, points out that having a company- wide tracking system for travellers could cause confidentiality issues if a firm’s top executives are shown to be going on the


COMMUNICATION MATTERS If technology is making the process of tracking travellers easier, what about getting in contact with them in the case of emergency, or even disruption? The most widely used ways of contact-


ing travellers remain the humble email and SMS text message, although some TMCs and travel suppliers offer apps, such as Amadeus Mobile Messenger, where companies can push notifications and messages to their travellers asking them to respond – emails and SMS messages can also be sent directly from this app. HRG’s Meyer says that its staff will contact travellers by email, text or phone during weather-related disruptions, but for security incidents, “that moves into the hands of somebody else”, typically


The GPS tracking in Amadeus Mobile Messenger is entirely optional based on the traveller’s preferences. There is a cultural aspect to this with some countries, such as Germany, having opt-out clauses for employees. But generally, people see it as a trade-off they are willing to make in order to feel secure while travelling.


ROB GOLLEDGE, head of marketing communications, Amadeus 94 BBT MARCH/APRIL 2015 BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM


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