ACCORDING TO AMON AMON COHEN Milk and money Empathy and understanding are needed for global travel management, because you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone...
forum for travel managers, I came across the following plea from a US buyer for peer-to-peer advice. “Can anyone tell me if they have anything specific in their policy to address support for the working mother on business travel?” the post read. “We have an employee that has requested to be reimbursed for shipping her milk home in dry ice that is accumulated while travelling on business.” To my shame, my reflex response was to sneer at this woman traveller, an ‘only in America’ story of self- obsessed health faddism gone mad. On reflection, I was totally wrong. It is an ‘only in America’ story – but of a very different kind, because what I overlooked was that the US is the sole developed nation where there is no mandatory paid maternity leave. Far from being pampered, this travel manager’s bureaucratic query inadvertently captures the miserable dilemma so many American women face: lose their livelihood or lose those precious few months of early motherhood. One can only too easily imagine that woman exiled in a drab hotel room, mechanically expressing her own milk as she aches for the infant she has been torn away from far too soon. It’s terrible for mother and child alike. This vignette is a reminder, if
H
any were needed, that managing a global travel programme needs
38 BBT September/October 2016
ERE’S A TRAVEL POLICY CONUNDRUM that doesn’t crop up every day. Perusing an online
Amon Cohen is a specialist business travel writer,
conference moderator and media trainer.
understanding. Good multinational travel managers must possess empathy, and they must possess context. It is vital to understand the social and economic conditions in which your travellers live. What may look unimportant or absurd to British eyes can make much more sense in another culture, so one has to look behind the motivation for any request – no matter how apparently strange – before putting a red line through it.
Hillary Clinton has pledged to
introduce statutory maternity pay should she be elected in November – but after our own EU referendum shock all bets are off as to whether US voters may not opt for a President Trump instead. The irony is that what Europeans long considered a fundamental worker’s right is exactly the kind of ‘red tape’ some Brexiteers hope to eliminate by taking us out of the EU. Failed prime minsterial hopeful Andrea Leadsom actually called to abolish maternity pay for small companies. It’s not inconceivable that a few years from now it will be UK, not US, travel managers exchanging posts on whether to refund employees for couriering their breast milk.
SPEAKING OF BREXIT, what’s been your biggest money-saving achievement as a travel manager so far this year? A new car rental deal, perhaps, or consolidation of your card programme? Well, whatever it was, I’m afraid all your good work was wiped out overnight on June 23. Sterling, at
time of writing, is well over 10 per cent down against pre-referendum levels, which conversely means subsistence costs every time one of your travellers heads abroad have rocketed more than 10 per cent. Not what buyers need just as they head into their 2017 hotel negotiations.
I also note that one of the first casualties of the Brexit vote was the booting even deeper into the long grass of a decision on a new runway for south east England. So far, a vote to Leave has not exactly been a triumph for business travel.
POOR MARRIOTT. First it incurs the displeasure of travel managers for marketing strategies that encourage travellers to book direct instead of through corporate channels. Now, somewhat less justifiably, it is being confronted by a far angrier group of critics – and this one really is an ‘only in America’ story.
‘Chemtrail’ campaigners believe the US government is using aircraft to spray the sky with chemical and biological agents designed to control the population for some – literally – nebulous and nefarious purpose. Marriott’s great sin, apparently, is to have new artwork in its bedrooms depicting skyscapes of clouds and jet vapour trails, thereby normalising and promoting this sinister clandestine policy. I wish I was making it up, but I’m not. Chemtrail conspiracy theorists are boycotting Marriott until it takes the pictures down. I say keep the pictures up – and help Marriott keep its hotels nutter-free.
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
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