Simon Gros
Travelport last week renewed its call for the United States and European Union to develop a task force on global emergency communications, in light of the ash-induced shutdown of European aviation. First made last year by the Transatlantic Business Dialogue, in which Travelport is a member, the argument is that officials on both sides of the Atlantic need to improve crisis communications for better decision-making. "Once again, governments are relying on fragmentary and incomplete data rather than facts to guide decisions regarding how people should travel and how goods should be transported between countries," Travelport stated. The company's vice president of government affairs, Simon Gros, spoke with The Transnationalabout this and TABD's other travel-related issue: improving Customs and visa processing.
What's the gist of, and the background for, your statement?
The Transatlantic Business Dialogue is a nonprofit that brings together businesses on both sides of the Atlantic to communicate business priorities to leaders on both sides. We issue, every year or two, recommendations to the participants in the U.S.-EU summits. TABD crafts these recommendations based on business interests and then publicizes them and sends them to the U.S. and EU elected officials in hopes of getting them moving. When TABD was casting about for their recommendations for the summit held in November 2009, one of the things we talked about was the first time the swine fluhit. There were lots of travel bans and trade bans that ended up being a result of a lack of full information on the table for governments. One was about the causes and effects of swine flu, but also the effect of travel bans and what that effect would have on the economy, whether it be travel companies or other companies that engage in trade … but [also] the global economy. We decided to recommend a mechanism be put in place such that the decision-makers who make the call to cease trade or travel because of any particular emergency on both sides of the Atlantic--and also we envision this would go global at some point--get together so they can begin a dialogue and have a set of communications systems in place so they can communicate effectively with each other when emergencies happen and make decisions on whether to stop or slow travel and trade based on fact rather than rumor, innuendo and an incomplete set of facts. Business leaders should be involved in this also. So companies like Travelport should be involved so they can understand the impact of these bans on businesses like ours. British Airways is a member of TABD; include them, talk to them about what capacity they have to shut down and what it's going to mean. It's an idea that has not been thoroughly fleshed out, but the idea is to have the full set of information in the hands of the decision-makers before they are tasked with making these difficult decisions.
So in the case of swine flu, that would have been more the health authorities, and in the case of the volcanic ash, you're talking about aviation and transport authorities who made decisions about use of airspace. Which decisions were made based on incomplete data?
I don't know enough about the particulars about what the facts are yet, and I don't know if anyone does, but one of the things that disturbed a lot of people was that it took so long for the transport ministers to get together and talk about this. According to one of the reports, it took at least a few days for all the transport ministers in Europe to even get on to a videoconference together. The idea is that there would be some kind of a go-team in place for just these kinds of situations, so you get all the decision-makers together quickly and not days after the travel bans first take place--preferably, before the travel bans take place so they're done in a coordinated fashion if possible and if necessary. It's a mechanism to get the right information. So if you had a transport subgroup of the global communications working group, maybe that's one thing that would have been discussed in advance. This isn't all that far-fetched a scenario. If you're putting together a list of 20 things that may affect some significant swath of air transportation across the globe, I think aviation people would tell you that a volcanic eruption in Iceland would possibly impact European air travel. I'm not saying this is something that definitely would have been addressed by this group that we're proposing, but it could have been.
In the proposal, who would be members of the "transatlantic task force"?
You do have health ministers on there because of course there will be epidemics. You also have people from homeland security, transport and foreign trade agencies of the various countries. All these people [would be] getting together to talk about "What if's." And the hope is that after these people sit down and listen to businesses that are potentially effected, that when the time comes to make tough decisions--like swine flu part two if it had come together as strongly as everyone thought it was going to--or volcanic ash cloud, these people would understand things better than they do now in terms of impact across sectors. From the business side, you bring in companies like Travelport and our competitors--they have as much information as we do. You bring in shippers, some of the world's biggest shippers like FedEx, DHL or UPS, [and] maybe some of the agricultural exporters and importers. It's not just travel and transportation we're concerned with here; it's the entire global economy, and when you get impediments to travel and trade that are not based on fact, then the economy suffers.
What are some other examples of TABD's issues that impact the travel industry?
A transatlantic trusted-traveler program. We have been frustrated by the rigmarole that the foreign traveler in particular goes through when they come into the United States. So we have been longtime advocates of putting together a program, kind of in the mold of the Clear program that used to exist domestically here, but something that could get your trusted business traveler through Customs and security a whole lot faster and not make them wait at Customs with everyone else including the vacationers. The guys who are making a trip across the Atlantic every month should be able to go through background checks and get into a kind of fast lane.
Wouldn't that be the U.S. Global Entry program?
It's similar to that, but the Global Entry program only works [for foreign travelers] right now out of Holland. TABD's proposal is that it be expanded. In all fairness to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, they're still working out the kinks in the Global Entry program. The shutdown of the Clear program didn't help anybody, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't continue to move forward with these types of programs. Right now, people are discouraged to come here. Global companies can't have face-to-face leadership meetings in the U.S. because it's so hard to get through Customs. That's visas and wait lines; it ends up being a huge hassle. DHS is starting to turn their attention a little bit more toward the traveler. Everyone understands their primary goal is securing the airports and the airspace, and they've done a pretty good job of that. In our opinion, they need to start turning their attention a little bit toward the traveler and working on the experience.