Comment: Taming lions

Paul Tilstone, managing director of GBTAGlobal Business Travel Association: formerly the NBTA (National Business Travel Association) and renamed in February 2011. It provides its members (business travel management professionals) with education and information Europe, takes a look at changes to the legal and financial environment in Europe, and how these might affect the business travel industry.

Having considered the Elephant (distribution) and the Rhinosaurus (consumer and supply changes) in two of my previous columns we will now move on to the next beast in the business travel jungle: the lion, representing legislation and taxation.

The lion is threatening and unpredictable. Whilst legislation is generally created to protect us, it often brings big changes to our industry and sometimes with unforeseen consequences.

With an ongoing plethora of legislation and taxation being created which impacts our daily business lives, it’s not always easy to understand how it will impact us until some years down the line. 

Recently a French buyer asked if GBTA Europe could hold a session on the impact of the new Bribery Act in the UK, as she needed to understand more about how it would be applied. I pointed out to her that unfortunately no-one knew, as until the law is tested in court there is no precedent on which to base the application of the law. 

Even the entity which created the law, the UK parliament, has had difficulty providing guidance on its application to our sector.

And in addition to the recent Bribery Act in the UK, recent legislations in Europe have been introduced across airfare advertising, security and data use changes, duty of care and corporate manslaughter, environment and the application of VAT. And these are just a few of the more well known legislative changes.

Each new piece of legislation requires a sophisticated set of updates to business travel professionals searching to understand how their policies and processes should change. They are complex but fundamental to how businesses operate and that, of course, has implications for the business travel sector.

For example, the Corporate Manslaughter and Homicide Act, which came into being in 2008, has already started to change business behaviour – but it was initially viewed like the Health & Safety Act in the 80’s,  like a beast which needed to be tamed.

We are seeing now that it is increasingly becoming a standard thought process within businesses, and that it is underwriting many of the elements of an effective travel programme.

The difficulty is that you need to apply appropriate duty of care depending on the needs of the individual. Like many new laws in Europe, they are people-focused. For example, if a young Dutch traveller is going to Iran for the first time they need assessing and probably some guidance and training.

If an Iranian employee is doing a work placement in Amsterdam for a year they need the same for Dutch travel – but the rules might not apply the other way round, or in different parts of the world, or for different people.

The UK act has implications, and they ultimately fall with travel managers. And of course legislation like this is introduced from both Europe centrally and also through national governments, so, if you have a pan-European programme you must know them all.

These changes are beyond our individual control. They deem to create more stability and fairness but they create another burden for us to deal with. The key to managing them is to keep on top of what’s coming, act reasonably and seek internal or external legal guidance, plus an understanding of what your peer organisations are doing. 

Without this the jungle lions may be waiting round the corner and you will be its prey.

An extract from “Laws of the Jungle” ,  a GBTA Europe presentation.