Those of us who travel frequently are well aware of the extra security at airports. Necessary though they are, the checks on luggage have made business trips more trying, have increased delays and have led to inconsistent measures, making it difficult to know with confidence the rules on both checked and hand baggage.
Yet for all this uncertainty, we are travelling more than ever. Overseas business trips from the UK reached 8.6 million in 2005 and year on year, since 2001, our trips abroad have increased by 5 per cent. By 2015 the number of long-haul flights alone taken by UK business travellers is estimated to rise from an average 7.6 flights per year in 2005-06 to 8.5 per year, an increase of 12 per cent (according to the Barclaycard Business Travel Survey 2005/2006).
It seems the increases in security have added to our confidence when planning trips, and that includes making plans for emergencies. In a recent businesstraveller.com survey we asked if you knew what was covered by your company's travel insurance policy. Only 10 per cent were fully aware, 65 vaguely aware and a worrying 25 per cent were completely unaware of what was covered. And in the latest Barclaycard Business Travel Survey 2006/2007, 4,003 business travellers were asked if they feel safe when travelling for work and only 3 per cent said no.
Charlie LeBlanc of ASI, an American risk assessment company which covers 180 countries worldwide, says: "Fifteen years ago a business trip to London was a big deal; you planned for it for a long time. Now people jump on planes without a second thought as to where they are going."
Mark Hide, managing director of Planet Wise, which offers training and tips for anyone going abroad and also special training days for companies sending their employees abroad, agrees. "I have trained people who don't even know what country they are going to – they just take a ticket and get on a plane," he says. "What we are saying is, do your research beforehand."
BEING PREPARED
Given that we all seem so casual about the risks of travelling, perhaps it's time we gave ourselves a wake-up call, if only to avoid any potential trouble we might encounter. Fortunately, there is plenty of free advice around. A quick look on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) website, fco.gov.uk, will show you whether the country you are going to is a dangerous area and offer travel advice, tips and information on passports and visa requirements. Its "know before you go" campaign was a result of travellers' lack of awareness of where they were actually heading. But if you don't have the time to do your own research what other options are available and whose responsibility is it to keep you safe?
From July, the new corporate manslaughter legislation "duty of care" will mean that it will be easier for corporations (and individuals like CEOs) to be convicted should something happen to their employees while under their care. And perhaps not before time – as Hide says: "It's amazing. At work you are told how to lift a box correctly and you may get a free eye test for sitting in front of a computer, but then you are just given a ticket to Mumbai and told, 'see you in a week'. Who actually tells you how to travel safely?"
One answer is Hide's company, Planet Wise, which can send an instructor to your company for the day (at a charge of £5,000). What you get out of it is up to you. There are a range of courses on offer, from basic – which covers information on culture and travel – to more interactive training and practical scenarios with smaller groups of ten or 12.
Hide says: "At the beginning of course everyone just looks at us with their arms folded saying, 'I know everything', but recently we trained 150 people over six days and not one of them could tell me who they were insured by or how they would get those details if the office was shut when they were abroad and something happened to them."
BEING COVERED
So once you have done your research and taken advice and training, is there much more you or your employer can do to keep you safe abroad? Well, let's start with some comprehensive insurance: the sort that, as well as including lost luggage, cancelled flights, lost laptops and medical insurance, is up to sending out a replacement colleague should you fall ill.
Nick Potter, general manager of Bupa Travel, says 50 per cent of the claims made to Bupa are medical claims from travellers getting ill overseas. "We operate in the corporate market and our travel insurance is based around business travel in the US, Europe and Africa. In terms of the high-risk areas we are partners with First Assist – so if you have medical insurance with us it's their job to assess you and get you to the best place locally to receive treatment and then if need be get you back home."
So much for normal travel insurance, but of course the security companies would like to encourage us to think of protecting ourselves to an even greater degree. As Neil Thompson, operations director for risk assessment company Red24, puts it: "Years ago travellers thought 'Do I need travel insurance and medical insurance?' And now it is the norm. What we are saying is get security insurance and we can assist you wherever you are."
HIGH-RISK DESTINATIONS
Its unlikely that this would be necessary for every destination, but for business travellers going to the parts of the world that travel insurance doesn't reach (or will not cover – war zones, for instance), the risk assessment companies come into play.
As Nick Potter of Bupa Travel points out: "We use the FCO as advice. If the FCO says 'don't go' and you do go, then you are not insured. We can't send people in to a dangerous area to get people out of a dangerous area. The Control Risks and Red 24s of this world are for people travelling to more dangerous places – which we would probably be saying don't go to."
Companies such as Ijet Intelligent Risk Systems in partnership with Kroll Worldwide, Control Risks and Red24 have different levels of service for travellers. The most common level of service is risk assessment. John Lea, business development director of Control Risks, which was founded in 1975 and covers every country in the world, says: "If people want to travel to FCO non-advised places, it is very rare that we will say do not go at all. We will show you how to do it safely. We are not in the business of telling people not to do business."
Thompson of Red24 agrees: "We do not align ourselves to any FCO websites because all countries have different agendas – eg for the Ivory Coast, the FCO will say please evacuate while the French will say it's OK. We are an independent organisation and we will look at all the information and analyse it."
Risk assessment companies analyse developments in countries around the world and can convey the information to you in a variety of ways, from SMS alerts to email newsletters – a bonus for the busy executive. As Charlie LeBlanc of ASI explains: "You can sit there and spend three hours researching India, but with our programmes we pull that up in five minutes and we can then provide that background support."
Control Risks has been around for the past 30 years and has several levels of corporate membership, from email alerts to the CRtracker, which lets a company know where each employee is in real time anywhere in the world. "We provide non-urgent advice as well," says Lea. "In fact this is our main bread and butter – non-urgent enquiries. But if there is an emergency we take ownership of the situation and activate the deployment of people to get you out."
WORST-CASE SCENARIO
To a large extent, travel risk assessment and security planning can ensure the safety of business travellers but what happens if the worst-case scenario occurs? What if a war erupts? Lea says: "Through our Dubai office, we co-ordinated the land evacuation of 102 personnel (14 clients) from Lebanon following the conflict with Israel last July. And in February 2006 our Haiti task force co-ordinated the helicopter evacuation of a client's 14 employees from the capital following mass protests during the presidential elections."
KEEP TRAVELLING
But with all the risks we still choose to travel. It is true a quick trip to Paris holds fewer risks than one to the Ivory Coast, but the future of travel security lies in these companies and what they can offer us. They cannot stop events from happening but they can prepare us and be prepared to get us out of a situation.
Thompson of Red24 says: "This is the sort of service people are demanding these days – TV has bought terrorism into everyone's front room and corporates are aware that there is a need for companies like us and that their business travellers are tracked when abroad."
The main point is that we should not be afraid to travel, to explore and to learn about other cultures. As LeBlanc says: "I think it is an exciting time for business travel. I've been hearing for 20 years that video conferencing is going to make it go away but I think we are still people who want to do business face to face and we are going to have to find ways to commit to travelling even if the risks are higher."
Lea says: "The safest thing for a company to do when there is a major incident is to pull everyone out of that country and put them in a secure place but that is not how to do business overseas. What we are offering is a sensible and practical service."
LeBlanc says of the future: "There are very few places in the world where it would be impossible to travel to; it will just be more challenging."
Questions to Ask Before You Go
- Is the country you're going to safe?
- Has it been cleared by the FCO? If not, your insurance could be invalid.
- Do you have travel insurance?
- Will your phone work in the country you're visiting?
- Do you need inoculations and if so, how long before you leave do you need them? Again, your insurance could be invalid if jabs are taken too late.
- Should you give your passport up at the hotel?
- What is the safest hotel floor for female travellers?
- What should your operating procedures be if you decide to head off to a remote location?
- Can you get internet access at the hotel?
Top Five Safety Tips
1. Research the risks and have an overview of what country you are going to.
2. Tell people where you are going and how you can be contacted.
3. Know where you are going in the country once you arrive; don't act like a lost tourist. Dress down and make sure your laptop is not just in a laptop bag and there is no Rolex watch flashing around on your wrist
4. If you do a lot of work at the hotel, make sure you are comfortable there and use the laptop safe. Don't just leave your laptop running – remember how many people have access to rooms.
5. When you have finished your business don't relax too much. Don't let your defences go down – you are still in an alien environment.
Contacts
Red24 +44 (0)20 8707 0000, red24.info
Control Risks +44 (0)20 7970 2100, crg.com
Ijet +1 877 606 4538, ijet.com
Kroll Worldwide +44 (0)207 029 5000, kroll.com
ASI Group +1 713 430 7300, asigroup.com
Planet Wise +44 (0)870 2000 220, planet-wise.co.uk
Bupa 0800 001022, bupatravel.co.uk
Foreign & Commonwealth Office, fco.gov.uk
