Comment: Preparing for the unexpected

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, looks at how the business travel industry can prepare for unexpected major events such as volcanic ash clouds and terrorist attacks 

So far, we have looked at the big five animals in the business travel jungle: the elephant (distribution), the rhinosaurus (consumer and supply changes), the lion (legislation),the buffalo (sustainability) and then the cheetah (the global economy). Now we have examined these five animals – are we complete and do we know everything we need to look out for, right?

Well, not quite.  You see there is one more animal we need to look out for in the business travel jungle.  It is an animal comprised of the parts of others, and if you have children you will know the animal well.  It is ….the gruffalo.

The gruffalo is, of course, a mythical creature, an unknown, and it’s therefore quite fitting that it represents “the unknown” or unexpected issues in business travel so we must looking at dealing with “business unusual”.  Whether it is volcanic ash clouds, economic crashes, global health scares or terrorist activity, the world of business today requires any organisation to be able to react and respond quickly to any unexpected circumstances.

This means that today’s business travel programme must be sleek and flexible to almost any situation.  Who would have been able to prepare in advance specifically for the ash cloud scenario in 2010?  No programme could have trained for that specific event as we just didn’t know such an issue existed. And while we must learn lessons from how we reacted and coped with the ash cloud in case it happens again - as we have seen recently in Chile - we actually need to prepare to be prepared rather than for any specific eventuality.

This final big beast has risen up the agenda really since the terrible atrocity of 911 in the US.  Since that day, business continuity has moved to a different level on corporate priorities.  And almost every year since that day we have experienced different global incidents. The Sars outbreak, swine flu, bird flu, the Mumbai terrorist attacks, 7/7 in London, the Eyjafjallajokull ash cloud, the tsunami in Japan and the seemingly endless earthquakes occurring globally - all remind us of the myriad of events we need to prepare for.

Each tests our processes for tracking, repatriation, duty of care, expense and increased costs and both internal and external communications.  Each event challenges our travel policy and processes to remind us that we must have everything in place to deal with fast changing situations.

We cannot prepare for every eventuality, yet we must somehow do this. This requires huge amounts of flexibility and stakeholder teams within businesses to make decisions. A smart travel manager and a high-service travel management company or supplier can literally save their company employees and keep businesses moving. In these circumstances we all have a chance to shine.  But to do so we must prepare for the unknown as best we can.

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