Few travel managers could have predicted the chaos that erupted this spring in the aftermath of Iceland's volcano eruption. The savvy are trying to learn from their experiences, with some employing scenario planning to better prepare for the next unforeseen crisis.
Unlike detailed disaster or contingency planning, scenario planning, contend such advocates as professor and book author on the subject Paul Schoemaker, enables organizations to envision various possible outcomes. "Managers who expand their imaginations to see a wider range of possible futures will be much better positioned to take advantage of the unexpected opportunities that will come along," Schoemaker wrote in an oft-cited Sloan Management Reviewarticle in 1995.
"You can never anticipate every possible situation, but you can prepare for most situations," Microsoft senior travel manager Eric Bailey said during an Association of Corporate Travel Executives meeting in Chicago in May. "Solutions have to be flexible, and reactions have to be quick."
Bailey saw the Iceland scenario unfolding as the ash clouds first began stranding travelers around the globe. "We had travel and security and risk and all these different groups within our company, and security was under the impression that it wasn't really their area. 'Nobody's in harm's way,' " he said. "But what we figured out in some of the discussions afterward is that security is our only organization set up 24 hours a day, everywhere in the world. Even though it wasn't a life-threatening emergency, security really should be the first ones to respond to some of these things, and then pass it off onto the other appropriate groups. That is really something that we changed because no one really knew whose problem it was."
In the face of such disruptions, the travel manager's role must be to "capture and consolidate data--we found this to be absolutely key" to tracking travelers. "We have a single agency that we can pull data from," Bailey added.
Microsoft also learned the importance of preparing communications--emails and text messaging--for various scenarios in advance to speed delivery of such messaging in the event of a disaster. "We are going through a lot more potential scenario planning now and working out the details. We know we can't predict, but at least there are possible scenarios."
Bailey said company executives also learned the value of establishing "long-term relationships." If you need a charter bus waiting in Madrid when a flight lands, "you don't want to have your first conversation with a charter company when you are desperate and you need something in six hours," he said. "We are doing a lot more of that: anticipating things that might happen, determining what our response might be and having strong vendor relationships."
[PULL_1]BNSF Railway Company strategic sourcing and supply manager Kelly Henry Luedtke, speaking at the Institute of Supply Management/National Business Travel Association Summit on Travel and Meetings, said: "I spend 20 percent of my day trying to be proactive, being predictive versus reactive. I spend a lot of that time on the Internet trying to understand what's happening in my worlds" of travel and railroads. She searches various industry reports, such as lodging forecasts, as well as railroad trends, seeking anything that could disrupt supply and demand.
More than a year ago, Henry Luedtke learned about the Bakken Shale oil field in North Dakota--potentially the second-largest oil find in U.S. history. The railroad is the second-largest employer in North Dakota, so she immediately considered the potential impact that oil drilling could have on her hotel rates and availability. She presented three- and five-year plans to senior management to build long-term lodging facilities. The plans had to be studied and approved internally by legal and risk management, and externally by labor unions and regulators.
"This takes a little time, but if I hadn't started a year ago, we would be so far behind the eight ball," she said. "Just as I predicted one and a half years ago, hotel rates in Dickinson, N.D., went from an average of $29 a night to more than $100. By being predictive, I've gotten myself a year ahead."
~Additional reporting by David Jonas