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Technology

Virus-Tracking Services Could Help Fuel Corporate Travel's Comeback

By Adam Perrotta / May 29, 2020 / Contact Reporter
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While most corporate travel remains on pause due the global Covid-19 pandemic, suppliers have busied themselves developing the services necessary for client companies to safely and confidently send their employees back onto the road as travel re-emerges. Among the tools that could be some of the most vital during the early stages of travel's recovery are virus trackers designed to give travel managers insight into Covid hotspots and the outbreak-related risk in specific markets. As organizations begin considering an eventual return to travel, several risk specialists and TMCs alike recently have rolled out such trackers, touting the tools as sources of essential information for the post-Covid travel landscape. 

As the coronavirus' potential to massively disrupt corporate travel became apparent earlier this year, travel safety and critical event specialists were early onto the scene in offering Covid-monitoring capabilities, doing so by adding virus data to their existing platforms. 

Among the first to develop Covid-centric tracking was Sweden-headquartered Safeture, which developed a Covid exposure tracker in late February as the virus took hold in Europe after the initial stages of outbreak in Asia. The company was able to leverage its existing global data platform—which is used by more than 2,500 client companies—to get Covid tracking up and running in short order, according to CEO Magnus Hultman. 

"The reason we were able to develop [the tracker] in such a short time was because of what we have in our platform. We have location data for very large amounts of employees in 190 countries as well as travel data—both planned trips and past trips," Hultman said. "We combined these data sets with the real-time alert data in our platform where we segmented all reported Covid-19 cases on a granular regional level, and the combination of this enabled us to quickly develop the exposure tracker." 

Safeture's tracker combines Covid infection data for 5,000 global subregions with individual employee travel patterns, including current and future locations, using real-time GPS tracking and travel booking data. Employee tracking is of course of limited utility with travel at a standstill, but it will be an imperative capability once travel resumes, Hultman said.

Meanwhile, U.S.-based duty of care and risk management provider Stabilitas also used insights from its "critical event intelligence" platform to get an early look at the virus's potential impact and ramp up tracking. 

"In January and February, we saw the beginnings of the epidemic in Wuhan and worked with some of our customers that had manufacturing facilities in China to help them do some capacity planning," said Stabilitas vice president of growth Jason Scott. "And then from there we saw there was a natural progression from Wuhan out into the rest of the world."

While data sources such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, World Health Organization and Johns Hopkins University made key early efforts to track the virus, there was no central clearinghouse for data that was available readily for easy reference, Scott noted. 

To build one, Stabilitas incorporated Covid-19 data from those and other sources and more into the epidemic data filter of its existing platform, enabling users to view virus hotspots, alerts and other information. To maximize the utility of reporting, data is as granular as possible, with information available at the city or county level, rather than the state, Scott said. 

With the virus-tracking capability up and running, Stabilitas now is working to build out new functions designed to meet the projected demands of travel managers in the post-Covid travel environment. 

"We're anticipating that, as people start traveling again, there will be new and different questions that an organization asks" when managing employee travel, noted Scott. Those new priorities include tracking prior to travel for potential exposures and contact tracing to gauge the further spread of positive cases. To help clients fulfill those needs, Stabilitas is adding functionality that confirms the recent travel of individual travelers using passenger name record data, while maintaining employees' right to privacy by eschewing more invasive tracking methods, such as GPS.

"We're developing a comprehensive system where somebody can just pull out their phone and it'll show where they've been in the past 30 days using PNR information," Scott said. "But we're not going to the point where we're Big Brother about it."

TMCs Target Tracking

While safety specialists with existing risk reporting platforms quickly could add Covid tracking in the early days of the pandemic, travel management companies recently have begun rolling out their own trackers, built from the ground up to offer clients what could become a core post-Covid TMC service.

In mid-May, World Travel Inc. rolled out WorldWatch, which features an interactive risk assessment map with real-time travel advisories and risk ratings incorporating Covid-19 information, drawing from data sources including the U.S. State Department. Risk information is linked to traveler itineraries to enable tailored alerts and updates, while an integration with booking capture specialist Traxo ensures out-of-channel bookings are funneled into the system. 

Travel management provider TripActions also has added Covid-tracking capabilities, rolling out an integrated reporting and monitoring tool within its travel booking and management platform. The service includes outbreak mapping and infection metrics for specific markets, as well as government restrictions in place for particular jurisdictions. The tool also enables travel managers to set and adapt travel policies based on those data points—for instance, by restricting travel to areas with higher infection rates only to important trips. 

"It's about giving companies the levers they need [to account] for geography, as well as who is traveling, in order to support the business while also keeping your broader company safe," said TripActions vice president of product Anique Drumright, who led development of the tool. 

The service also includes features designed to empower the individual traveler, such as including details on supplier cleanliness and safety procedures within the booking flow, as well local government policies that could affect their trip experience. 

"Traveling today is different than what traveling was in January… so the goal in all of this is to give everyone access to all of this new relevant information," said Drumright. "We're trying to make sure that our [client] companies and their travelers are getting back to business safely while also being cost-effective." 

TripActions also has made some functions of the tracker service available for use free of charge by any company or traveler, who can input origins and destinations to assess Covid-related risk for a proposed trip. Offering the tool for public use is a bid to help foster the bounce-back of the travel ecosystem from the virus, according to Drumright. 

In the longer term, the importance of Covid-specific tracking hopefully will decline in importance as the pandemic abates and a vaccine eventually is delivered. But the sudden onset of the virus—and the chaos it sowed—has made clear the importance of having systems in place to monitor potential future large-scale events so corporate travel programs can be better prepared next time around. 

"This foundation is applicable—obviously, with some changes—for political unrest, natural disasters, future global health crises and other things that could potentially disrupt travel," Drumright noted. 

And post-Covid, the ability to track and forecast outbreaks and other disruptions with the potential to disrupt an entire company or industry could earn travel departments a more central role within many organizations, Stabilitas's Scott predicted. 

"Travel managers can leverage this information to build toolsets that aren't only relevant for travel management but are relevant for things like physical security and supply chain," Scott noted. "That will allow travel to stake a claim for a seat at the table for risk management at a corporate level and take more of a leadership role coming out of this." 

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