Your guide to travel program evolution (part 5): risk management

Featured expert: Kenneth Nordlien, Founder and CEO, Riskline

TOP TAKEAWAYS:

• Pre-trip risk assessment is fast becoming mandatory in many businesses
• Consider two-way communication tools to connect Travel Managers, Travel Arrangers, and travelers
• Quarantine, passenger locator forms, and digitized health documents will remain in place for international travel for some time

The pandemic has influenced a significant shift in travel program focus towards traveler safety, health, and well-being. As the world reopens to both domestic and international travel, businesses will need to be on the front foot of a fast-evolving travel landscape.

Having the right plan, strategies, and systems, as well as being armed with up-to-date information, will be key to safeguarding travelers and the business.

The Business Continuity Institute⁵ published an article in April 2021 that outlined valuable lessons learned from the pandemic, which could be considered when reviewing travel risk policy and procedures.

It suggests to:

• be strategic with the locations of travel
• review approval systems to ensure sufficient agility and flexibility
• ensure that preferred suppliers meet the health and safety standards as approved by accredited organizations
• Ensure traveler data is up to date to enable improved communication

Riskline is a travel risk intelligence organization that provides real-time risk insights for destinations around the world. They monitor breaking developments from local sources, including government travel advisories and bulletins from law enforcement, emergency services, security forces, and disaster relief agencies, as well as social media sources.

CTM interviewed Riskline’s founder and CEO, Kennet Nordlien, to unearth the importance of risk assessment and communication tools for business travel in the current climate.

Nordlien expects the new and varying health, vaccination, and testing requirements to cross international borders will remain in place for the foreseeable future in many regions, and businesses need to prepare their travel programs to integrate these requirements into their existing risk management processes and solutions. Riskline’s new layer of COVID-19 risk intelligence, integrated alongside its traditional risk management insights, has required the company to increase its global analytical team by approximately 20% since the beginning of the pandemic.

“We have over a decade of experience in real-time crisis tracking, which meant that we were quickly able to adapt to the outbreak of the pandemic, to counter the ‘infodemic’ that it created and the fast-changing regulatory environment that came with government responses,” Nordlien says.

“Some of the new travel measures that have been enacted, such as quarantines, passenger locator forms, digitized health documents, and COVID passes, will almost certainly remain in place for some time to come in some parts of the world, especially for international travel. Let’s not forget that COVID-19 wasn’t the first pandemic the world has seen and is unlikely to be the last. Because of this, our COVID-19 travel intelligence will continue to remain important to those who want to stay safe and informed on their travels.”

Risk assessment had become a core component of pre-trip approval workflows for most businesses, even pre-COVID, and now presents a significant increase in demand as businesses get back to travel.

“COVID-19 was everyone’s duty of care wake-up call,” Nordlien says.

“If you weren’t accounting for it before, you certainly should be now. At many companies, a risk assessment is now mandatory before a trip is approved, even at a domestic level. During the pandemic, governments have also made last-minute legislative changes regarding lockdown rules and travel restrictions, which has meant that it has become vital for travel managers, travel arrangers, and travelers to have access to emergency two-way communications tools.”

And what’s next for risk management solutions beyond the COVID-19 response era?

Nordlien predicts:

• Extreme weather events because of climate change will be more common than ever before
• The effects of natural disasters, such as storms, wildfires, and monsoon rainfall, will continue to increase in severity
• Cyberattacks will increase as businesses, government, and organizations continue to transfer functions and operations to the digital world

“Riskline is always working towards improving and evolving our products to meet changes in the travel industry. In preparation for increased levels of travel, we have several product updates in the pipeline, such as improvements to our alert messaging capabilities and mapping systems. This year our AI sourcing tool added COVID-19 related items to their results feed, allowing our analytical team to be alerted to travel restriction changes more quickly. We’re also currently looking at automating some of our COVID-19 measure sourcing, including experiments in machine learning.”

References

[5]The BCI – Travel risk management: Why it’s important, April 8, 2021.

This blog post is the fifth in a six-part series of excerpts from CTM’s ebook, A Fresh View to Business Travel 2022. You can download the full ebook here.