Companies wanting to monitor their staff safety when they are on business trips can now avail of TravelTracker, an online service that notifies human resources (HR) managers in real time of potential risks such as terrorist attacks, flu outbreaks and natural catastrophes as they occur in any part of the world.
The web-based service, developed by risk management firms International SOS and Control Risks, first delivers an email alert identifying the country, the type of risk and the number of company employees who are currently located in the area.
“TravelTracker gives a HR manager the capability to send travelling colleagues in affected areas a SMS message directly from the application to very quickly provide the appropriate response on the ground,” said Samuel Chauffaille, senior director business development, International SOS Online, Asia.
The service is an enhanced version of International SOS’s Travel Locator product, providing a faster and more proactive approach in notifying subscribers of safety incidents. The new alliance between International SOS and security specialist Control Risks enables TravelTracker to provide subscribers with all the latest security information around the world.
“The 24/7 accessibility gives companies online accessibility on their travelling population,” said Chauffaille. “The nature of security information is much better now. We have different mapping capabilities – you can zoom in and zoom out of a country. You can add a colour-coded map so you can easily see the risk ratings of different countries.”
During the Jakarta bombings last week, TravelTracker provided advice to nearly 200 travellers across 40 companies. These individuals were either in Indonesia at the time or were about to travel to there.
With the former version of the service, approximately 1.7 million unique travellers have been tracked per year based on 50 million bookings received.
Today, close to 500 clients are using the TravelTracker services, mostly companies with a large base of international travellers.
Travel Tracker is an add-on product to International SOS basic service portfolio. Companies must sign-up for International SOS membership to subscribe to the online service.
“Membership fee for companies starts from US$50/US$60 per traveller per year. TravelTracker costs an additional US$25 per traveller a year,” Chauffaille said. “Realistically, when a company have more than 100 international travellers per year, it needs to get technology involved and get assistance from the internet and resources from companies like us to help manage your travelling population.”
For more information, visit www.internationalsos.com
Gigi Onag
