Travel Risk, Management Companies Enhance Traveler-Tracking Capabilities

Security concerns have continued since Sept. 11, 2001—threats to travelers still abound, ranging from man-made terrorist threats at London's Heathrow airport to events brought on by Mother Nature, such as 2005's Hurricane Katrina. The business travel industry, however, has adapted. Since that cataclysmic event, corporations have placed an ongoing emphasis on traveler tracking, and risk management firms and travel management companies have responded with technologies and expertise to help companies ensure the safety of their business travelers and employees working abroad.

Successive disasters have prompted travel risk management companies IJet Intelligent Risk Systems and International SOS and several travel management companies to further upgrade their offerings.

"Enhancements are very much driven by an incident occurring and a company saying, 'Here are the holes and the gaps in ability to respond efficiently and effectively to that incident,' " said Marty Pfinsgraff, COO of IJet, which earlier this month announced signing Trondent Development Corp. as its global data consolidation partner.

"London brought us a whole new set of scenarios that frankly none of us had put our heads around until we saw this major air traffic-disruption scenario," echoed Tim Daniel, COO of International SOS. "It's pretty amazing how much every time there's a major event, it changes our view of what companies need."

At a client's request, IJet is at work on a two-way notification system. "We can send a message to an employee that, for example, says, 'Are you in Lebanon? Here's what's going on and this is what you need to do: Press #1 to acknowledge receipt of this message, press #2 if you need immediate assistance,' " Pfinsgraff said. "We can track whether the employee is OK and immediately triage the people affected."

The offering bears a resemblance to what TQ3Navigant, recently acquired by Carlson Wagonlit Travel, brought to the German market last year. "It was a very German-oriented process: You would receive a SMS message if there's a problem and it's your responsibility to call this number and let them know where you are exactly," said Norm Rose, president of Travel Tech Consulting in Belmont, Calif. "To me, that's the next evolution of the tools—the idea of using the mobile phone and having some sort of tracking via the GPS that's in the mobile to tell you not only how many people are in that city, but to have an additional drill down and look at that city and it tell you where they are."

IJet also is broadening its services beyond travelers by monitoring threats to facilities and suppliers. Launched last year at the American Society of Industrial Security conference, IJet's facility monitoring capability compiles databases of floor plans, emergency exit routes and rosters of employees, and alerts a company to an incident or potential threat. IJet's supplier monitoring service, which is still in development, works in a similar manner. "Companies are increasingly reliant on third parties for certain components of what they do that are key to their business," Pfinsgraff said. "They need to be aware of threats to not only their own travelers and their own facilities but also their downstream suppliers who are critical to delivering service to their clients."

At the ASIS conference in San Diego later this month, IJet will debut a more user-friendly interface for its Web-based portal. "Rather than looking at one screen of IJet's services, users can have multiple pieces of our application in view at one time, so they can look at our world map, which shows where employees are, and have that in one window and in another window they might have all of our alerts, or our employee locator function," Pfinsgraff said.

International SOS' enhancements are similar in focus. "We've realized a lot of these tools are used sporadically, so we're making them simpler to use," said COO Daniel. "Some people want very straightforward search capabilities, other people don't want to do the searching themselves, but want the answers prepackaged and presented to them, so we've been working on how to broaden the ways people interact with that data so they can be more effective and efficient."

To remedy any disconnect users might have using International SOS services, Daniel said the company is developing a Web-based "tracking training" course. "We can train people from different companies in one setting," he said. "It's something we're going to experiment with in the coming months and for those people who haven't been trained, we are going to gently reach out and remind them."

Daniel said the recent disruptions in London unveiled the need for an entirely different tracking capability. "Most traveler-tracking tools are focused around a destination or flight number," Daniel said. "With London, the questions went much more to which flights are transiting around London. We have a request now for much more up-to-date information to reflect which flights are being cancelled or postponed—today you can get that, but you have to go to multiple systems. We're looking at integrating all those data feeds into one dashboard."

Recognizing the importance of thorough traveler-tracking capabilities, many traditional and Internet-based travel management companies have formed partnerships with either IJet or International SOS.

Some TMCs, however, have taken steps toward a comprehensive, in-house solution. Online TMC Travelport at the National Business Travel Association International Convention and Exposition in Chicago this year showcased its two-year-old Corporate Solutions Center, a 24/7 service with locations in Chicago and Denver that employs former air traffic analysts and controllers to monitor and track flights. The company then alerts travelers to delays or cancellations through "care alerts" and reschedules flights, if necessary.

During the Aug. 10 event in London, Travelport said it alerted more than 120,000 corporate and leisure travelers to changes in airport security and flight delays and cancellations. "This is something that started on the leisure side," said Dean Sivley, COO of Travelport. "It started out being automated, then we put in the human element. The corporate travel world is so cluttered, so when we took a look at what makes us better, we saw care."

Woburn, Mass.-based Travizon, in conjunction with Trondent, developed GlobalGuard, a tool that updates a traveler's transaction, flight details and hotel information every 15 minutes. "We work with company's HR systems to aggregate data from their system and we tie that into the information that we process through GlobalGuard," said Lehi Mills, CIO at the TMC. Since its development five years ago, the product has gone through a few revisions. More than 100 clients are using the tool. "By default, every customer's information is tracked," Mills said, "so in an emergency, even if a company doesn't use GlobalGuard, we are internally."

American Express late last month rolled out to Japan, Asia/Pacific and Australia the risk management suite already available in the United States and Europe. It includes Web-based traveler-tracking tool TrackPoint, as well as Travel Alert, an e-mail security alert system. and InfoPoint, a Web site with customizable destination and security information. "We launched TrackPoint with an American Express client base in '05. Then we integrated the functionality and the infrastructure that we have at American Express, so it's been enhanced in terms of quality and speed," said Herve Sedky, vice president and general manager for American Express Business Travel.

BCD Travel will use Tri-Pen's TravelMaster platform to report all traveler tracking and risk-management data, as well as real-time corporate card data into the security component of its yet-to-be-released Decision Source product (see story, above). Carlson Wagonlit Travel has 93 percent of its post-ticket data covered under its Discovery daily traveler-tracking service and plans to feed pre- and post-trip data on a daily basis to clients by early 2007. TMC network Radius last week introduced Safe & Secure, a global traveler tracking system powered by London-based risk management firm The Anvil Group.