Agencies Aid In Tracking Travelers

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 threw the nation and most U.S. corporate travel departments into emergency mode. Generally reporting success in accommodating travelers during the unprecedented freeze of the air traffic system, thanks, in large part, to the efforts of dedicated travel staff, most corporate travel buyers said agencies' emergency procedures allowed them to locate and bring home stranded travelers.

The extent of the dislocation of business travelers as a result of the groundstop was reflected in a poll conducted by the National Business Travel Association the day after the terrorist attack.

In surveying 200 corporate travel managers via the Internet, NBTA found that 25 percent of companies had 201 or more stranded travelers because of the flight ban. Nineteen percent of companies reported having between 51 and 100 travelers stuck away from home and 21 percent had between 11 and 30. The companies' primary concern: tracking and bringing home their travelers.

Kevin Iwamoto, global air and car supplier manager for Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard and president of the National Business Travel Association, summed up many corporate travel buyers' priorities when he said, "The first obligation I have is to get people home."

Director of global travel for Chicago-based Arthur Anderson, Dan Meier, who was responsible for more than 1,000 unaccounted travelers, turned to his travel management company for help. "First, we identified through our agency that we had no one on the hijacked flights. Then we found out where our people were." Finally, he said, "We found ways to take them home."

Sheri Carlsen, director of global travel services for EMC Corp., a data storage company based in Hopkinton, Mass., said, "How do I get home?" was the number-one question she heard from people on the road during the attacks.

"Our department's job is to tell travelers what their options are," according to Carlsen, "but we were dependent on the agencies to provide us with this information."

Many travel agencies have companywide wide area networks, computer networks that collect passenger data before passing it on to global distribution systems, to find travelers. American Express used its Global Information Service Group WAN to locate clients, said Steve Power, vice president and general manager of corporate travel.

"Independently of the GDSs, we're able to account for and have control of our primary customer information through Global Information Services," Power said. Because the Global Information Services server is located outside of New York, its operation was not affected by the severe damage American Express' headquarters suffered in the attack on the World Trade Center.

TQ3 Maritz Travel Solutions also made use of its back-end WAN to locate missing travelers. "We were able to locate our travelers very easily," said Mike Koetting, senior vice president at TQ3 Maritz. "We have a proprietary network, comprised of our ProView travel booking tools, which is deployed all over the country. All our passenger information goes to the Maritz campus in St. Louis, then it goes to Sabre." Agents at TQ3 Maritz simply had to look up passenger information on that network.

George Odom, manager of travel services and corporate meeting services at Eli Lilly & Co. in Indianapolis, said his agency, WorldTravel BTI, also was able to go through the back-office system to tell him where his travelers were. "They were outstanding in letting us know that we had no one on the flights that went down, which put people at ease right away," Odom said. "There was a lot of good communication throughout the organization."

Agencies that do not have networks with centralized traveler information had to go to the GDSs for passenger information. Larry Austin, of Austin Travel in Long Island, N.Y., also beefed up his support staff. "We had a full staff in every day last week, including the weekend, and our first goal was to get all our customers back," Austin reported.

"In all, 520 travelers were stranded. We pulled up a report through Sabre that gave us the list of all the people on the road. Then we called all our clients and let everybody know where their travelers were."

However, GDSs typically block access to passenger information in the event of an airline crash, to give airlines enough time to notify next of kin before anyone else can see the names of victims. This meant that agencies without their own sets of passenger records were unable to tell if their travelers were on the hijacked flights.

Mark Vilcsek, senior purchasing manager for travel services at National Semiconductor Corp. in Sunnyvale, Calif., went to Sabre to locate passenger information himself. "You can pull from the GDS who was where, and we were fortunate to obtain some information before Sabre shut down our ability to go in to query where people were. We were able to pull some information in the beginning, including the people we had traveling on the 11th."

Vilcsek also contacted his travel agency. "I'd say 80 percent of our travel is globalized through one travel management company," he said, "so we were trying to obtain a lot of information through various means with them."

Lisa Trenda, a travel manager with Cargill Inc. in Minneapolis, also sought to find travelers through her GDS. "We did a queue drop in the GDS on those hijacked planes, then of whoever was stranded. But a lot of the information in the GDS was blocked, making it difficult for us to get information on our own company."

Once travelers were located, many agencies went to extraordinary lengths to get them home. Austin Travel's Larry Austin said, "A lot of people drove home, or took trains. We got people on planes, and we found them hotel rooms. We worked with Avis to get people cars. I personally escorted stranded CEOs."

Jane Wheatley, director of operations at TQ3 Maritz in New York, related another situation where travelers personally were escorted by travel agency staff. "We had 40 European executives from a major pharmaceutical company stranded in the New York area, and we had an equal number of American executives from the same company stranded in Basel, Switzerland. We put one of our managers on a charter flight taking the European execs from New York to Basel. Then we returned from Basel to New York with the American execs."

American Express' Steve Power said, "There are so many extraordinary stories of how agencies reacted to the crisis. A PricewaterhouseCoopers traveler told me how one of our agents kept trying to find different ways for him to get home. We booked him plane tickets. When those flights were canceled, we rented him a car. We found him hotels along the route of his cross-country drive home. He said his travel counselor 'adopted' him throughout the ordeal. 'It was so comforting' he said. He called his counselor his 'guardian angel.' "

Carol Ann Salcito, president of travel management consultancy Management Alternatives in Stamford, Conn., said, "It's very good what agencies are doing at this moment. We've had so many stranded travelers, but we've seen agencies step up to the plate and spend an inordinate amount of time securing transportation and housing for those travelers. Many agencies were prepared for the crisis. They've done a lot of work, in the face of a considerable adversity.

"A lot of agencies did lose personnel or loved ones in the attacks," Salcito added. "That, in and of itself, is a huge tragedy."