IJet Debuts Tool Amid Reemerging Traveler Concerns

IJet Travel Risk Management this month announced an all-in-one "comprehensive travel security package," offering corporations risk management, medical assistance and travel intelligence services, a week after the terrorist bombing of the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta renewed traveler concerns regarding hotel safety.

Through the GlobalGuardian package, companies can register their travelers to receive a host of services while on the road, including: professional medical, security and legal advice; emergency medical and political evacuation; language translation and interpretation services; and emergency cash advances, among others. The services are offered for a fee together with IJet's traveler tracking and emergency alert services. GlobalGuardian was created in conjunction with independent risk consulting firm Kroll Inc. and Baltimore, Md.-based Medex Assistance, a provider of 24-hour travel assistance and international medical insurance that boasts 40,000 health care professionals across the globe.

IJet CEO Bruce McIndoe said corporations need "access to both proactive and reactive traveler protection services. We created GlobalGuardian to help security, human resource and travel professionals achieve a common goal—ensuring peace of mind for travelers."

Several corporate customers have signed on for the service so far, including McLean, Va.-based mega-consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. and Toronto-based mining company Noranda Inc. Noranda's mining business averages about 12,000 trips per year, often bringing employees to remote and sometimes volatile regions of the globe, such as the Ivory Coast. While the company had been using separate security and travel intelligence services, Ross Brown, Noranda director of HR, corporate and international, said the company last month adopted GlobalGuardian as "an opportunity to consolidate those services under one supplier." Still in the early stages of implementation, Brown said that by September the company will have all of its travelers enrolled with the program.

Meanwhile, this month's hotel bombing elevated already high concerns about hotel safety. A resort hotel in Bali in October 2002 was the target of a deadly attack and another Marriott property, the Marriott World Trade Center hotel, was destroyed in the September 2001 attack in New York City. While travelers visiting domestic destinations need to be mindful as well, many of the safety guidelines promoted in the immediate aftermath of the October incident focused on U.S. travelers in international cities.

"If you're in an area where there is a special potential for terrorism, wherever possible select gated hotels with long driveways and multiple security layers between the street and the building," IJet's McIndoe said. "Like most criminals, terrorists prefer targets of opportunity. By contrast to a gated hotel, a hotel fronting a busy downtown street puts security personnel at a disadvantage because of all the activity occurring outside the front door."

When a company has no choice but to book travelers in a busy downtown property, McIndoe recommended conferring with the hotel's management about security procedures. While hotels are wary to disclose procedures they have in place, ask in particular: "How they control the pick-up/drop-off zone, and verify that a security guard is on duty at the front door at all times," he said.

In terms of personal safety inside the guest room, McIndoe prefers modern hotels to historic ones. "Modern buildings are more apt to have electronic guest room locks," he said. "Similarly, large hotels tend to have more elaborate security systems than smaller properties."

Given today's greater security concerns overall, travel managers said they are asking hotels more security-related questions than they had in earlier years in their 2004 requests for proposals. In many cases, travel security questions now overlap with companies' more stringent policies on general corporate security. At such a company as AMS in Fairfax, Va., for example, "It really goes beyond the traditional travel management RFP," said Karen VanBuskirk, a senior principal and corporate travel manager. "Our security department now reviews the security questions of the RFP to see if they're compatible with our own internal protocol."