Executive travel
help: kidnappers, for all their faults, are after all still human and can often be swayed by the same interpersonal skills that got executives their jobs to start with. Not that kidnapping is the only physical danger corporate travellers face. Especially with rising geopolitical tensions, espionage and blackmail are both threats too, even as muggings or illness have never gone away. And if they occupy distinct spaces, there’s increasing evidence that cyber and physical security must be understood together if businesspeople are to truly stay safe.
A safe space?
If corporate kidnapping is an unfamiliar phenomenon to most people in developed countries, the same can’t be said for less stable areas of the planet. Once again, Ecuador is a case in point here. Just days before that aquaculture boss was taken in Durán, a Canadian-Italian businessman was kidnapped from a restaurant in neighbouring Guayaquil.
Similar cases are common elsewhere too. In Mexico, for instance, there are roughly 1,200 kidnappings each year, and the aftermaths are often bloody. In March, a businessman from the town of Chetumal was kidnapped at gunpoint outside his house. Just 12 hours later, he was found dead by the side of a dirt road. Nor are Western executives necessarily immune to similar threats, especially if their assailants have state power behind them. In 2019, Richard O’Halloran, an Irish executive at an aircraft leasing company, was prevented from leaving China due to a dispute with the firm’s Chinese chairman. In the end, he only made it back to Dublin in January 2022. To put it differently, the dangers here are both varied and severe – something corporate security departments are increasingly aware of. If nothing else, this is clear from the numbers, with giants like International SOS and Global Rescue forming part of a sector expected to reach $15bn by 2031. It’s a similar story when you talk to the experts themselves.
“I’m seeing companies paying more attention to that now,” says Randy Spivey, founder and CEO at the Center for Personal Protection and Safety (CPPS), a US organisation that teaches executives how to stay safe abroad. Another senior security official, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of his work, agrees. “There’s a risk assessment on the trip as a whole,” he says of multinationals sending workers overseas, explaining that even before the flights are booked, companies will first examine if the journey is even necessary. Fair enough: with 56% of EU
Chief Executive Officer /
www.ns-businesshub.com
corporates now boasting some kind of digitalisation, meetings that once took place in some dusty conference room can now happen on Zoom. Once a trip is confirmed, in any case, our anonymous specialist explains it’s now time to consider the kind of risks travellers might face. As the panoply of examples above imply, the answer varies significantly by destination.
There is not much an executive can do if foreign security services decide to take their phone for inspection.
“Once a trip is confirmed, in any case, our anonymous specialist explains it’s now time to consider the kind of risks travellers might face.”
If, as he puts it, kidnapping by criminal gangs is a “national sport” in Nigeria, visitors to the Middle East should be more wary of militant Islamists. As O’Halloran’s Chinese odyssey hints, meanwhile, some governments will use detention as an economic or political tool, even as corporate espionage remains another looming danger. And if these doomsday scenarios are bad enough, both insiders stress more humdrum perils – being mugged, or catching malaria, or getting shaken down by the bouncers at a dodgy bar. As our anonymous expert says: “It’s the less sexy, less glamorous stuff, which is actually still a problem.”
Eyes on the road With all these challenges in mind, what can executives do to keep themselves safe? In the first instance – and as the multiplicity of hazards imply – the answer has much to do with where an executive finds themselves.
Whatever worries a businessperson may have about terrorist kidnapping in Egypt, for example, muggings are reasonably uncommon (for all their
52%
The percentage by which global business travel
expenses contracted in 2020.
McKinsey 41
A Lot Of People/
Shutterstock.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
