For Midsize Travel Programs, Middle East Crisis Response Diverges

War in the Middle East, instigated late last month by the United States and Israel against Iran, immediately impacted business travel, and not just those countries specifically involved in the conflict. Iran's strategy is to make it economically and politically untenable for the U.S.-Israel coalition to continue their strikes over time, so Iran and surrogate organizations in third countries have waged attacks on energy and travel infrastructure—including damage to some airports and hotels—in Bahrain, Lebanon, Oman, United Arab Emirates and other countries in an attempt to create a wider conflict that spins out of the coalition's control. The conflict has killed approximately 1,800 people across the Gulf States, according to Bloomberg.

Travel has been disrupted. Thousands of flights have been canceled, and stranded leisure and business travelers have counted into the tens of thousands, due to extensive airspace closures and reduced overland travel options. Many companies moved quickly to gain evacuation traction, but not all had official decision-making procedures.

As the U.S.-Israeli missile strikes began on a weekend, travel managers of all program sizes scrambled in their off-hours to handle the fallout. Three managers for midsize travel programs—at various levels of readiness to manage the impact of major geopolitical conflict—spoke with BTN about their respective responses. They were wildly different in terms of resources and results. BTN granted each buyer anonymity, as none were authorized by their companies to speak about their experiences, the inner workings of their organizations' travel risk management operations or how their third-party supplier partners performed in the crisis.

Company 1: The Catalyst

Interview: March 4, 2026

"There's so much going on. First, Venezuela, which we didn't have much impact from that, but then Mexico and now this bigger one in the Middle East. They just keep coming."

That's the recent geopolitical roadmap as summarized by one midsize travel program manager, including the January capture by the U.S. of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and a February shelter-in-place warning for certain Mexican states by the U.S. State Department after the murder of a cartel leader.

The travel manager just onboarded American Express Global Business Travel as a new travel management company but has other TMCs in the mix for certain regions. He leveraged his data to locate travelers: "I'm comfortable with data, and I've always used my reporting really well, but relying on the TMC data is really tough [in this situation], especially when you have multiple—and that doesn't include travelers who book outside the program."

The company had a large number of travelers in the Middle East just 36 hours before the conflict broke out. By that Saturday morning, only a handful were still in the area, but they needed assistance and it was hard to come by, according to the program manager. The company had a basic travel risk management plan with Crisis24, but found that it offered advice directly to impacted travelers more than any proactive support for the organization.

"Travelers are relaying to me what Crisis24 is saying and getting extraction to Oman and catching commercial [flights] from there," said the buyer, who still had two travelers in the region as of March 4. "We are four or five days in, and I'm not sure what support [Crisis24] has really provided so far other than advice. Overland extraction and visa support—it sounds like they will start facilitating that now."

For the first overland extraction, this buyer worked with his travelers' hotel concierge and found a local driver to take the five-hour trip to Oman. The buyer had worked with a broker to have charter flights as a backup "for astronomical costs," he said. Since the travelers ended up taking commercial flights, it relieved him of the charter costs.

"But there were a couple of travelers who didn't want to take that advice at the time," the buyer said. "We have to take a person-by-person approach. I'm not comfortable taking on additional liabilities on my own. I don't have ISOS or another [firm] to make that distinction for me. We can rely on guidance from C24, but to some extent it's down to the individual at this point."

In a March 11 follow-up call, the buyer told BTN his final two travelers returned home from the region on Mar. 4 and 5, respectively, with TMCs supporting the process. The agencies followed up on active bookings two or three times daily to increase the likelihood the travelers would have access to a flight amid the cancellation chaos. They each departed from Dubai on separate flights for extended journeys home.

Given geopolitical tensions throughout 2026, this buyer had already begun conversations with International SOS and Global Guardian prior to the emergency to understand what additional risk management tactics and boots-on-the-ground resources could add to his company's crisis response.

"This is far and away the catalyst to get something in place quickly," he said. "TMCs emailed me a couple days in with a templated message to let me know which people had active bookings, but I had scrambled on Saturday morning and had already talked to those employees. So in terms of TMC response, it was too little, too late on that piece. [The TMCs] help me get bookings. Maybe if we had a dedicated account resource, but I'm not sure what they would do besides what I'm doing with the data. These situations just highlight the fact that relying on a TMC for duty of care is not viable—that's not their expertise and we can't really expect that. I think you have to have a more dedicated resource."

Company 2: The Protocol Problem

Interview: March 5, 2026

"We have all the resources: the best TMC in the world, the travel risk management company, a security department—which not all midsize companies have, but we do. The problem is that we have no protocol in place; our security team had no idea what role International SOS plays for travel risk. They never told anyone to call them. They just cheered on the business travelers as they scrambled to arrange their own exits."

That was the scene on Feb. 28 when a travel buyer for a global midmarket company in 25 countries accessed her email in the early evening. "There were a ton of emails," she said. "In my previous company I was really engaged with the security department, and everyone understood the protocol. By the time I was notified and saw my emails [at this company], it was too far gone for me to interrogate how travelers were contacting the agency and why no one told them to contact ISOS—even though we engaged with ISOS two years ago."

At first the buyer was told two individuals were in the region, but in fact at least four travelers were impacted as exit strategies from the Middle East began to dwindle. Ultimately, stranded employees were connected with charter flights to Cairo, where they traveled onward on commercial carriers. One traveler in Asia, cut off from airspace across the Middle East, decided to stay and work remotely for the time being.

"We had to work with another company for the charters," the buyer told BTN. "Amex GBT is our TMC, but they weren't booking anything that wasn't in the global distribution systems—and we know that airlines aren't putting all their content there." She said travelers should be able to book outside the system in an emergency as long as they are communicating their plans.

The company's security team "had their pitchforks out" regarding TMC support, "but we aren't paying for a higher level of service. We don't have a dedicated agent—it's up to the corporate if they want to pay for that," the buyer said in the TMC's defense. She had her own criticisms, though, "To be honest, I didn't get any outreach from GBT. Our travelers were 40 kilometers from a U.S. military base. That is really scary."

The buyer has taken notes on the situation and told BTN, "We're not done yet."

She said her boss is a tough sell and takes persuading, but events like this have the potential to break through.

"We need a robust and comprehensive process engaging all resources—internal and our third-party partnerships. It's my mission now to get them all engaged," the buyer said. "I'm not new to this; I've done it before. I was shocked by the travel security team and their lack of understanding about what ISOS could have provided. It might be an issue of inexperience [there], but we have to work past that and get to a place where we have a real protocol." 

Company 3: The Integrated Program

Interview: March 6, 2026

"On every booking, we have the itinerary go through International SOS and the traveler gets an email. It says it's from our company because we don't want to cause alarm, but it's really from ISOS. The email tells people what they need to know about traveling safely in the destination and that they have the right documents. It also makes sure the traveler has the ISOS app on their phone, so any communications that need to happen can happen."

Those alerts came into play for the U.S.-headquartered, global company on Feb. 28. The firm had just held its executive leadership meeting in the region. One executive remained in the Gulf traveling on business in Abu Dhabi and responded to an ISOS welfare check that he was fine. Two others, however, had extended the trip for personal travel and the company did not have details on their whereabouts.

"Thankfully, they had reached out to our facilities team, which owns the contract with ISOS, to let the company know they were stuck in Dubai. Facilities and HR connected with me to ask what we could do, even though they were on leisure travel. And, of course, we were also checking the welfare of employees living in affected locations."

The solution, according to the travel buyer, was to book every available commercial flight out of Dubai in the hopes that something would depart. "We opened a group chat between the three travelers, myself and ISOS, and I had my TMC account manager at Egencia as well," the travel buyer said. "We told the travelers to keep their leisure bookings on Emirates in case they were able to get out with their original plans. But we also worked with our TMC to book all available flights out [including direct-booking flights]. At that point we weren't worried about when or where, and we just decided we would resolve everything once they were home."

The individual business traveler secured the first passage out on Emirates through London Heathrow and onward to San Francisco on British Airways. The leisure travelers remained in the region awaiting commercial options and made safe passage out on March 11.

The buyer has worked with her TMC, facilities, HR and accounting to ensure travel to the Middle East and through the Middle East to Asia-Pacific has been shut off. That has impacted a number of India-based employees who had plans to travel to the United States via Dubai. "What we are asking them to do now is to re-route through Europe—either Amsterdam or Frankfurt—and that may change what they need to have in terms of visas," she said. "This has all added cost for the company, but we have to roll with the punches."

Even with all the pieces in place with internal and external partners, this travel buyer didn't feel the company was prepared: "We have to respond to whatever is going on; we go with it and we do our best."

It may also be worth pointing out that the company with the most coordinated duty-of-care process was the slowest to get its travelers out of the region. Was the safest option to shelter in place if danger wasn't imminent? "We had heard other companies were transferring people to Muscat, but I didn't want to put our people in places where we didn't have offices or other resources. There were no big issues in Dubai, so it felt safest to stay put."