GEOPOLITICS
Rocky all over the world?
risk. Overall we are much healthier and wealthier than we have ever been.” Consequently, the security experts all
say, the primary challenge is retaining focus on where the highest risks to business trav- ellers truly lie. “Whenever I speak about travel security, I show a slide of a shark with massive gnashing teeth, looking very nasty, and another of a cute, fat hippo,” says Keen. “Which one poses the greater threat? Sharks have killed 50 people since 1958. Hippos kill 500 per year.” Around 30,000 people are killed on roads
attacks around Europe. “The advice we were giving to people visiting Tel Aviv four years ago is also the advice we would give to people visiting London now,” he says.
COMBAT COMPLACENCY Perhaps naming London as a potentially risky destination is no bad message to put across to travellers. As independent security consultant William Sandover puts it: “We tend to underestimate risks in familiar environments and overestimate them in unfamiliar ones.” That same complacency
“Sharks have killed 50 people since 1958. People worry about the shark, but how many worry about the mosquito and malaria? ”
in the US each year, Keen points out, while 20,000 die in Mumbai and 3,000 in the UK. Even greater numbers worldwide succumb to malaria. “People worry about the shark, but how many worry about the mosquito and malaria?” Keen asks, yet travellers to malaria-affected areas regularly fail to take prophylactics, wear long trousers and apply repellent, or take other precautions. Yet even if the metaphorical ‘sharks’ are
the lesser risk, Keen agrees some things have changed, such as the epidemic of terror
can extend to presuming routine practices in one part of the world can be applied in others. “I’ve seen people at Lagos airport trying to call an Uber,” says Sandover. “If you get to Lagos and haven’t yet made your ground transport arrangements, you’re in trouble.” When it comes to the risks being taken
by your travellers, it would appear another popular British maxim needs reiterating regardless of the specific details of the risk outlook for 2018. Be prepared.
Potential geopolitical impacts on travel in 2018
AMERICAS Donald Trump’s presidency will remain predictably unpredictable in 2018. Last year saw the sudden imposition – and equally sudden lifting – of an ill-considered ban on onboard personal electronic devices for flights from certain destinations. Severe immigration restrictions on passport holders from Chad, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Syria are still in force. In March 2016, the US decided that travellers from visa waiver programme countries, including the UK, who have visited any of these countries (except Chad) since March 2011 must now apply for a visa to enter the US. Perversely, Trump-induced volatility
offers some advantages for travel managers. “Political and economic uncertainty [in the US] will limit airlines to modest fare increases of 1% at best in 2018, even if demand continues to rise,” according to Advito’s 2018 Industry Forecast.
ASIA Is phone tracking a good idea?
INCREASED TERRORIST TARGETING OF INSECURE public places has changed attitudes to traveller risk management, according to Control Risks’ Charles Hecker. “Since these are places where a business traveller is likely to be, the onus is shifting to employers knowing where travellers are, even when visiting fairly routine destinations,” he says. The earliest incarnations of traveller tracking tools tried to locate travellers through their booking records. Today, they can be followed much more directly via apps on their phones. But is phone tracking as much a no- brainer as it sounds? Not necessarily. First, the even greater emphasis on obtaining consent in the GDPR
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
(General Data Protection Regulation), effective 25 May, will oblige companies to be more careful about rules of engagement with employees on when, how and indeed if they are tracked. But HP Risk Management’s David Holley is sceptical about how helpful tracking apps are anyway. “I’m not an advocate,” he says. “Companies are not necessarily buying these apps to protect their travellers, but to protect the managers so they can say they have done everything they can. The 3G apps only work in 3G areas. They are only as good as the connectivity available to you, and people lose their phones. You also have to ensure the platform is monitored and updated. They can give a false sense of security.”
How do you solve a problem like Korea? The war of rhetoric that broke out in 2017 between the leaders of North Korea and the US has created a duty-of-care headache for security and travel managers. In the face of nuclear threats, is it responsible behaviour to continue to send executives to the Korean peninsula, or indeed neighbouring Japan? “It’s a difficult one because if it goes
wrong, it will go wrong very fast. A lot of fingers are being crossed,” says independent travel risk consultant William Sandover.
Should it be of comfort, the view of
Control Risks senior partner Charles Hecker is that: “We are confident of a political resolution. We think President Trump gets the message about the cost to South Korea. The concern is about the risk of a miscalculation [in the posturing by both sides].” So far, says Hecker, “no one has been cancelling trips to South Korea. We haven’t had a single call from a client saying, ‘Help us reorganise our supply chains so we can take South Korea out of the equation.’”
BBT January/February 2018 95
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