However for a corporate travel risk management program, particularly one that reaches across the globe, the responsibility to care for every traveler on the road demands the ability to monitor multiple potential risks. As important, the company needs to know where their travelers are at every hour of the day, across all time zones, and be able to reach out to them and respond when a threat arises.
The good news is technology is providing answers to the problems both of monitoring threats and tracking individual travelers worldwide. While we may become weary of the 24-hour news cycle, it does provide one constant source of raw information about the state of the world; in addition, governments and private firms are continually updating strategic reports and tactical situational analyses, keeping eyes on both natural disasters and manmade trouble spots around the globe.
All this intelligence is then collected, filtered and distilled into actionable information; the next step is to get it into the hands of the affected travelers in a timely way. However with hundreds of potential travelers on the road, rather than relying on ad hoc messages to individual employees, the risk manager should have more robust means of communicating with every travelers. In fact, traveler tracking and communication are both significant components of an effective travel risk management protocol.
Managing the Risk
Last year, a GBTA Foundation study found that an overwhelming majority of organizations – 83 percent – report their travel programs include risk management protocols, a number that continues to rise as companies become more acutely aware of the accountability they have for travelers’ Duty of Care both at home and abroad.
The study also found that organizations rely on multiple channels when communicating with travelers; however for nearly two-thirds (60 percent), the most common messaging platform was through their travel management company’s system. For example, in its AirPortal 360 software tool, Christopherson Business Travel offers a way capture and analyze all company travel data in real time.
In addition to integrating itineraries with a company’s travel policy and travel spend reporting, AirPortal 360 has a feature called SecurityLogic, which provides maps, alerts, and security reports of travel risks to facilitate the company’s Duty of Care responsibilities.
On a scalable map of the world, the tool highlights travel alerts, from natural phenomena to political unrest. Using data from itineraries, AirPortal 360 matches up alerts with travelers who may be headed into potential trouble spots and automatically pushes SMS or e-mail messages to alert those affected travelers. Employees in other areas that are not affected don’t receive the automated messages.
In addition, with AirPortal 360 travel managers can use text messaging to query a single traveler, groups of travelers, or all travelers to determine their current status – answering with a single tap either “I’m OK” or “I need help.” If assistance is required, the message is then forwarded to the appropriate risk management resource to be taken care of. The results are displayed in a fully integrated dashboard that includes other features of the software, which gives the travel manager a one-stop real-time view into the status of the company’s travelers.
The Christopherson AirPortal 360 is one such tool available today; as demand increases for better monitoring and Duty of Care response, other customizable and integrated systems are coming online as well.
From wildfires in Canada to earthquakes in Japan, headline-grabbing events tend to motivate out of fear. However, disasters on the personal level – accidents, illness, lost documents – are far more commonplace and can be equally disruptive to business travel. Employers have a Duty of Care to provide “reasonable and adequate precautions” to protect the well-being of their traveling employees, regardless of the scope of the potential risk.
The recent spate of terrorist actions from Boston to San Bernardino to Brussels has underscored the fact that threats are not limited to faraway high-risk destination. Every company, every traveler – indeed, every employee – is a potential target. Therefore an effective travel risk management program and the traveler tracking and better communication tools that go with it are critical to protect an organization and all its employees.
Lyft Introduces Scheduled Rides
Lyft, the San Francisco-based transportation network company has announced that it’s the first ridesharing platform to test rides scheduled in advance. With scheduled rides, a driver will be at the destination at a specified departure time.
The feature allows passengers to schedule rides up to 24 hours advance. The process works the same way requesting any on-demand ride does, with the extra step of adding a departure time. If plans change, the passenger can update or cancel the scheduled ride up to 30 minutes before the requested time.
Lyft has started testing this feature in the San Francisco area with plans to expand it more broadly this summer.
Travelport Signs with Conferma For Virtual Card Hotel Billback
Travelport has announced a new global agreement with Conferma, a provider of corporate travel expense settlement and reconciliation, to use Conferma’s hotel billback technology with virtual card numbers integrated with Smartpoint, Travelport’s point of sale product.
Rolling out globally in phases, hotel billback will allow travel management companies to centrally settle hotel bookings using a Conferma-powered virtual card number issued by a variety of providers, including banks and Travelport’s own B2B payments business, eNett.
With this solution, there are no changes to standard booking and payment workflows, but automation, security and reconciliation are all enhanced by the use of virtual cards. Additionally, booking and custom reference data specific to individual corporations can be captured during the transaction at the point of sale.
Google Maps Enhances Hilton’s Digital Check-in
Hilton Worldwide has announced that Google Maps has been integrated into their HHonors app giving members the ability to see more details about the hotel’s surroundings and their room’s potential view before making a room selection.
The new feature allows guests to visualize where available hotel rooms are located in relation to city streets, public transportation, parks, bodies of water and other markers. Additionally, members will soon be able to see where additional points-of-interest like landmarks or attractions are in relation to their selected room.
The capability is now available on the Hilton HHonors iOS and Android apps and will be available on Hilton’s brand websites this summer. The feature is available only to Hilton HHonors members who book direct through Hilton’s brand websites, mobile app, reservation call centers or preferred corporate travel partners and professionals.
Sabre Announces Amazon Collaboration
Sabre has announced that it will increase the speed of delivery for cloud-based flight availability using solutions built on the Amazon Web Services. Working with Sabre, carriers will house their availability data in the AWS Cloud which can then be accessed via multiple shopping channels, whether carrier website, online or offline travel agency, or other source. The new cloud-based solution will be available to Sabre’s customers later this year.
“AWS provides powerful cloud services to customers and is constantly innovating to deliver new services and features to meet its customers’ needs,” said Tom Klein, president and CEO of Sabre. “As the world moves to a computing ecosystem dominated by mobile devices, speed and frictionless transactions are the expected norm, and the cloud delivers those benefits.”
Mobile Ticketing: Coming To A Turnstile Near You
Remember the old subway tokens? They have long since disappeared from the public currency, although a few may still be found in Granny’s change purse. Indeed, the paper and magstripe tickets of just a few years ago have given way on many public transportation systems to smart contactless cards.
Now some of the same technology solutions found in airports and railroads are being adapted to mass transit. The result is not only changing the way travelers catch a bus or subway, but how transit systems are handling the business of collecting fares. According to new research from Marseille-based Intelling, consultants who specialize in secure transactions and smart card markets, mobile ticketing is expected to see a compounded annual growth rate of 51 percent through 2021, while the share of market for today’s familiar tickets and fare cards will dwindle.
In the past, fare collection schemes have been based on a closed loop – that is, magnetic media or contactless cards that are only valid within that transit system. However, those systems are expensive to operate for the transit authority and often inconvenient for the traveler. Today however many transit authorities are looking at open loop payment schemes, such as accepting EMV contactless credit and debit cards, and Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled mobile devices.
“We are experiencing a turning point in the operation of mass transit,” says Thierry Spanjaard, CEO of Smart Insights. “The whole software and services aspect is now prevailing over the physical fare media.”
Silvercar Continues New York Expansion
Silvercar is continuing its expansion in the New York area with the launch of locations at the Newark Airport and in Brooklyn. Cars are located at the WallyPark at Newark Airport and in Brooklyn at the McCarren Hotel & Pool.
The new locations will be the thirteenth and fourteenth locations for Silvercar nationally. In addition to its current Manhattan location, other locations include Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver, Miami, Phoenix, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago and Denver.
To access Silvercar and make reservations, consumers can download the mobile app available on both Apple and Android mobile platforms. Consumers can also visit their website at silvercar.com.
Demand for Inflight WiFi Drives Passenger Choices
The demand for inflight connectivity services continues to soar, particularly outside the US and Canadian markets, which are becoming saturated. Furthermore, when choosing a flight, more than half of global travelers factor WiFi into their choice of airline, according to a recent global study from Gogo, the inflight connectivity solutions provider.
The survey found that 90 percent of global passengers brought at least one WiFi enabled device on-board their last flight. When it comes to smartphones and tablets, there are more than twice as many Android powered smartphones as iPhones being carried onboard the world's commercial aircraft.
Data Usage More Than Doubled in 2015
Americans used 9.6 trillion megabytes (MB) of data in 2015, three times the 3.2 trillion MB in 2013, and more than double the 4.1 trillion MB used in 2014. This is the equivalent of consumers streaming 59,219 videos every minute.
But while data usage exploded, the amount of time those devices were in use rose by only 17.4 percent, from 2.5 trillion minutes in 2014 to 2.8 trillion last year, according to the annual survey of the CTIA, the association which represents the US wireless communications industry.
The survey found that smartphones are the number one wireless device in the US and still growing, with more than 228 million smartphones in use in 2015, up almost 10 percent from 2014. Nearly three-quarters of the population (70 percent) now owns a smartphone.
"Americans today have mobile-first lives. In 2014, we had a record amount of data on our 4G networks," notes Meredith Attwell Baker, president and CEO, CTIA. “Remarkably, the amount of traffic on mobile networks more than doubled last year and shows no signs of slowing down.”
Are Millennials More Vulnerable To Cyber Attacks than Boomers?
When it comes to online security on the road, digital natives may be less savvy than their aging Baby Boomers counterparts, according to the findings of a survey from the security intelligence providers at Webroot. The study reveals that although an overwhelming majority of both age groups said they are concerned with safeguarding their personal online security, Boomers are taking more preventive actions to secure their data when on the go, while Millennials are less diligent.
For example while Millennials said they want more security and data privacy, almost two thirds (59 percent) share their personal travel plans on social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. By contrast, 71 percent of Baby Boomers reported that they never share personal travel plans on social media.
Not surprisingly, Boomers seem to be better at keeping track of their mobile devices while on travel; only 7 percent of this age group reported losing a phone or tablet during travel in the past year. In contrast 19 percent of Millennials said they’d lost a device.
Almost half (49 percent) of the Boomers surveyed said they have antivirus solutions installed on their devices – 10 percent more than Millennials (39 percent).
Webroot offers some simple strategies that travelers should adopt to keep devices and information secure when they’re out on the road:
• Back up your mobile devices – an important safeguard to help recover from cyber attacks or losing a device while traveling.
• Keep antivirus software up-to-date.
• Avoid free public WiFi. Cybercriminals are known to create ad-hoc networks that look like free Internet, but actually launch a “man in the middle” attack. Stick to secure networks when traveling.
• Keep devices with you at all times – they are hot targets for theft.
• Use a password.
• Use good judgement. Be extra vigilant about the websites visited, the URLs followed and the applications and mobile apps used.
