Security Tools Gaining Ground

Corporate travel buyers who began assessing travel security tools and services during the past year now are implementing those solutions, just as security services are becoming available from a growing number of sources.

Travel management companies American Express, TQ3 Travel Solutions and Total Travel Management in July made moves into the travel security market, joining WorldTravel BTI, Rosenbluth International and GetThere, all of which began to market security services earlier this year.

Adding to existing security protocols provided by the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund this month rolled out traveler tracking software from IJet Travel Intelligence. IMF senior transportation officer Caro Cook, who in December began working to broaden security, said, "Creating a traveler security program is a very painstaking process. You have to cover 100 percent of the possible scenarios. It took us five months just to select IJet."

With operations all over the globe, Washington, D.C.-based IMF takes security very seriously, Cook said. The organization gets daily "security bulletins covering currency, safety and transportation issues, among other things" on potentially dangerous destinations from the U.N. IMF also has a staff of a dozen security specialists who disseminate the bulletins to travelers via an intranet site and targeted e-mail. Travelers who are going to potentially dangerous destinations are warned at the time of booking with the help of American Express, IMF's travel agency.

If an IMF employee wants to go to a country the U.N. has flagged as a hot spot, he first must notify IMF's security department, which makes note of where the traveler is going and creates a record of the traveler's passport and visa.

Cook said that until now the weak spot in IMF's security program was its inability to locate traveling employees at a moment's notice. "People were supposed to provide contact information to the agency, but 20 percent of the time they don't, and we don't know where they are," she said. "With our new system, travelers that book through the agency will be tracked by IJet. They should be able to tell me where all our people are within four minutes. It's a good investment."

Bruce McIndoe, CEO of IJet, said growing numbers of travel buyers are interested in IJet's travel security offerings. IJet had about 30 client companies at the beginning of the year, now it has about 170. "We're being brought in to our client companies through the travel department," McIndoe said, "but very quickly security or risk management departments become part of the buying process. It becomes a three-way conversation."

The basic entry price for IJet's Worldcue travel security service is about $5,000, which buys a company real-time destination intelligence delivered via e-mail. For such added services as traveler tracking and profile management, IJet charges additional fees.

In July, officials from TQ3 and Total Travel Management announced they would partner with IJet to offer destination reports and traveler tracking to their clients, joining WorldTravel BTI, which already private labels some of IJet's offerings.

Starting this fall, TQ3 will begin including a security suite as part of its travel management platform, based, in part, on its alliance with IJet to provide destination intelligence, said Chris Bomze, director of market planning. "Our corporate clients are very interested in safety and security," he said. "Some want a security specialist to educate their travelers in seminars, some are buying laptop locks, others want traveler tracking, destination intelligence or executive protection. The bottom line is, companies want more attention paid to traveler security."

Danny Hood, WorldTravel BTI president, said strong support from senior management has helped buyers speed the rollout of WorldTravel's travel security tools. "On Sept. 11, we had one client using WorldTravel's PeopleTracker security system," he said. "Now we have 34 clients using it."

This summer, American Express is putting the finishing touches on a data bridge that will provide profile data to such security companies as IJet to use for traveler tracking and e-mail security alerts. The agency officially plans to recommend two third-party security firms to its clients in September, when it makes the data pipeline—which is being developed with a few clients, including the IMF—available to its entire client base.

"American Express is not entering the travel security market, but we're enabling our clients to do what they want," said John Berkley, Amex vice president of corporate travel marketing. "We're building an efficient data pipeline that will deliver profiles and itinerary information from American Express to the security firm of the client's choice."

Sabre-owned self-booking behemoth GetThere began offering destination reports to its client base of more than 800 companies with the March release of GetThere Travel Intelligence. More than 30 companies now use the service. Tony D'Astolfo, GetThere vice president of sales, said the company expects more clients to sign up as funds for security services are added to next year's travel budgets.

Richard Wooten, director of corporate travel services at Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin, signed on for GetThere Travel Intelligence after deciding that the pricing for the service fit his balance sheet. "The destination reports have been well received by travelers," he said, "and it was relatively inexpensive to roll out." Wooten might conduct a survey of Lockheed Martin employees to see how many of them actually are reading the destination reports GetThere provides, something he has no other way of knowing.

Two early adopters of Rosenbluth International's Global Security Suite, Credit Suisse First Boston and Oracle Corp., reported satisfaction with the security service, which includes destination reporting and Track Point traveler tracking information. Track Point details the location of all traveling employees at any given time. Nine companies now are using the suite, which rolled out in February.

CSFB's global travel management team of 10 are the only ones who access Track Point, said Randee Stypulkowski, director of global travel. She said the function already has helped the company through one crisis: "When an air traffic controller's strike struck Europe in June, Track Point enabled us to very quickly locate all the travelers that were in Europe. We advised them of the situation and made alternative travel arrangements where it was necessary."

CSFB's security department supplies the travel management group with destination reports on potentially dangerous spots for travelers, and is working with Rosenbluth to determine whether the company will implement the agency's destination reports as well.

Oracle Corp. realized it needed to enhance its traveler security services late last year, said Val Cordell, senior director of the corporate travel program. "As a result of the terrorist attacks, we realized we had a big gap in our ability to locate traveling individuals," said Cordell, who oversees 30,000 travelers all over the world. Along with executives from various divisions, including human resources and facilities, Cordell became a member of Oracle's global crisis management team, which was assembled just after Sept. 11. "In July, we rolled out Rosenbluth's Track Point as part of our comprehensive approach to global crisis management," Cordell said. In a crisis, Oracle would use Track Point to locate and contact travelers to advise them on what to do next. "Track Point should do what we need it to do: locate travelers."