Buyers Using Security Cos. To Track Every Traveler

By Jennifer Merritt

MARCH 06, 2006 -- A growing number of experienced buyers are pioneering direct relationships with such companies as International SOS and IJet Intelligent Risk Systems instead of relying on the daily reporting mechanisms provided by travel management companies to ensure traveler safety and security.

International SOS, a traveler tracking and medical and security assistance-company, today unveils a full version upgrade of its service, adding such features as a global overview of travelers and situations, new search functions, e-mail alerts and the ability to edit traveler information. The upgrade comes as client demand for customizable systems and regionalized tracking capabilities appears to be rising.

International SOS said it has partnerships with about 90 travel management companies, while IJet said it gathers data from more than 50 TMCs and has partnerships with six: Carlson Wagonlit Travel, Expedia Corporate Travel, Orbitz for Business, Travelocity Business, WorldTravel and, as of last month, Ultramar Travel Management.

Travel management companies have partnered with risk management companies on various levels to offer third-party services in addition to their own tracking tools. Though mega travel agencies have offered traveler-tracking tools with less sophistication than those of security and safety specialists, the megas all appear to be developing them. Carlson Wagonlit Travel plans by midyear to have up to 92 percent of its worldwide transactions covered under its Discovery daily traveler-tracking service and also is looking at ways to feed pre- and post-trip data on a daily basis to clients. WorldTravel in January announced plans to use Tri-Pen's TravelMaster platform to report all traveler-tracking and risk-management data, as well as real-time corporate card data into its PeopleTracker system. Tri-Pen launched TravelMaster in August 2004, and Victoria Wofford, president of the New York-based company, told BTN she had one client using the system with plans to roll out more. Both Carlson and WorldTravel use Intelliguide Corporate's Go Alert 24 service that pushes e-mail alerts to travel managers. The product has been in place since 2001 and has "dozens" of clients, according to Cindy Sheaffer, director of operations at the company's Winston-Salem, N.C. headquarters. Meanwhile, progress on American Express' TrackPoint, which offers pre-travel data for traveler tracking purposes, seems to have slowed.

International SOS is issuing a staggered rollout of the product to about 30 percent of its client base beginning this week and plans to complete the rollout to its 150 customers within three weeks. The latest wave of enhancements include a search capability that provides access to travelers' previous itineraries, a function to track employees with no itinerary—for example, those using a private corporate jet—and e-mail notification that informs travel managers in the subject line of not just an alert, but also of the number of travelers in the area. The enhancements were based on customer feedback, the firm said. "Travel managers are looking for features and functionalities that support any proactive practices they have in place with their risk management procedures," said Melissa Kreidie, product manager for International SOS' traveler locator service.

Gregoire Pinton, vice president of International SOS online, said the company's next step is to link personal information with a destination. "We're currently using a service called the Emergency Report to link the traveler information we have, such as vaccinations, with the destination and checking, based on the destination, whether vaccinations are up to date," he said.

While International SOS focuses on traveler tracking, its competitor, IJet Intelligent Risk Systems, is moving toward tracking threats to facilities. "At most companies, travelers make up about 5 percent to 10 percent of the employee base," said Marty Pfinsgraff, COO of IJet. "We're working on monitoring threats to facilities and allowing companies to database their facilities, track their emergency management plans and know who crisis managers are, so we can facilitate emergency response not just for travelers, but also for local staff. That's important when you have things like hurricanes or the tsunami."

IJet client Doug Weeks, senior manager of global travel at Booz Allen Hamilton, is interested to see how region-specific IJet's monitoring capabilities can get. "We still need to get to more city-specific intelligence and understand, 'OK, there was bombing on a train in Madrid, but how close was that in proximity to where Booz Allen's facilities are?' " he said. "IJet does a great job of saying, 'This is the intelligence and risk assessment for Madrid,' but we need to take it to the next level to see if there's a way to geo-code it and say, 'This incident happened here in the southeast part of the city, and are our facilities are right next door or 10 miles away?' "

With events that range in severity from London's subway bombings to the New York City transit strike, today's travel manager is acutely aware of the need to effectively ensure traveler safety and security, which is why many are facilitating that directly with risk management companies.

"Any multinational corporation typically has more than one travel agency and it's difficult for them to get a consolidated picture of their exposures when an event occurs," IJet's Pfinsgraff said. "We consolidate that so you have a system that tells you who's at risk right now. It also supports emergency response, whereas most tracking systems are geared toward expense control and accounting, not emergency response."

Kathy Hall-Zientek, manager of travel services at Moog, has worked with International SOS for the past two years and saw benefits of a partnership within the first week of implementation, after an employee died of a heart attack while on a business trip. The morning she spoke with Business Travel News, Hall-Zientek had six travelers in Chicago about to board a flight to Manila when an attempted coup occurred in the Philippines. After unsuccessful calls to the State Department, she connected with a manager at International SOS. "They had the information when the government didn't," she said, whose travel program operates as an Airlines Reporting Corp. certified Corporate Travel Department.



Three-Way Partnership

Weeks began his relationship with IJet three years ago, after recognizing the company needed to upgrade from relying on its travel management company, American Express. "They gave us the data and reports, and our travel management company is very good at what they do, but we figured there are third parties that are very good at what they do, and that's the business of traveler intelligence and safety," Weeks said. He added that American Express is supportive of Booz Allen Hamilton's relationship with IJet, ensuring the risk management company gets all passenger name records that American Express creates. "It's been a good three-way partnership," he said.

"One reason we partnered with IJet is that some of our clients are looking for that ability to go directly to their traveler-tracking report and communicate in the click of a mouse with those affected travelers," said Kathie Lia, global product director at Carlson Wagonlit, which has offered IJet's services to clients since October 2005.

Yet, as comprehensive and advanced as risk management systems may be, it's hardly effective if employees don't adopt the available technology—an issue for both Hall-Zientek and Weeks.

"People just didn't get it, so we held seminars," Moog's Hall-Zientek said. "You really have to talk to them one-on-one to make them understand how it important it is."

Booz Allen Hamilton's Weeks said though IJet provides the company with a Web site to post relevant travel alerts and information, it's used "relatively infrequently" by employees despite the company's heavy international travel volume. "It's pretty clear to me that you can ask travelers to get the information themselves, but it's obviously better to push it to them," he said, adding that senior management pushed employees to utilize the program as well. "They enforced the notion of our travel policy, that you've got to use our designated travel management companies because that's the only way we're going to be able to track you through our new risk management program," he said. "That's an added bonus, because as we know, not everybody uses the TMCs, and having the executives come out and say the reason isn't because we're trying to be difficult, but because it's for your own safety, gave an additional level of compliance to our program."

Compliance bonuses aside, risk management services should be a top priority in managing a travel program, said Hall-Zientek who added, "Let's face it, you can't manage your travelers 24/7, so you need to have a company that knows what they're doing and that's their sole purpose of existence."