Fast Track

The recipients of this timely travel intelligence information weren’t government operatives: They were business travelers and travel managers, and the dispatches came not from the Central Intelligence Agency or the Federal Bureau of Investigation but from IJet Travel Intelligence.

Shortly after terrorists crashed hijacked commercial jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, intelligence analysts at an Annapolis, Maryland, command post swung into action. Within hours of the attack, they were flashing news bulletins and tips on how to proceed to thousands of laptops and wireless e-mail devices.

But the recipients of this timely tactical information weren’t government operatives: They were business travelers and travel managers, and the dispatches came not from the Central Intelligence Agency or the Federal Bureau of Investigation but from IJet Travel Intelligence. The 55-person company is one of a new breed of travel support providers that keep anxious travelers posted on everything from State Department travel advisories to routine delays on a real-time basis, while monitoring their whereabouts for their companies.

Such services are increasingly in demand in today’s tense global climate. Many frequent business travelers continue to grapple with an understandable fear of flying: 84 percent of those polled by Institutional Investor in this month’s CFO Forum said their company’s executives have expressed concern about travel safety. Not surprisingly, there has been an upsurge in meetings conducted via videoconferencing.

But grounding employees often isn’t an option for Wall Street firms. Thus even as they trim travel expenses to cope with the economic downturn, many are seeking out travel services that specifically address safety and security worries.

Travel-intelligence providers are increasingly in demand. IJet reports that its client base has surged eightfold since September 11, to almost half a million participating employees. And the more traditional international travel-management giants, such as Rosenbluth International and Business Travel International, are also scrambling to introduce new services designed to assuage the concerns of frequent fliers and the corporate travel managers responsible for keeping track of them.

“September 11 placed a focus on the role of security in the travel process and the magnitude of getting it wrong,” says David Radcliffe, CEO of BTI, which operates in 80 countries.

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Business travelers want more information on the travel hazards they face, whether it be dodgy weather outside Denver, a taxi strike in Paris or a security shutdown at John F. Kennedy International Airport. And corporations responsible for employees scattered around the globe want more than ever to know where they are at all times. Indeed, BTI’s Radcliffe says this is now the top priority for travel executives, even above clamping down on costs.

Harried company travel coordinators can spend hours piecing together scattershot information about employees’ progress around the world. And outside travel agents only perform such due vigilance on request, scanning their databases and relaying the information by e-mail or phone, all in good time. Now travel coordinators can access powerful search engines through interactive traveler locators, such as BTI’s PeopleTracker and Rosenbluth’s TrackPoint, to find thousands of their far-flung charges at the click of a mouse.

TrackPoint, a component of Philadelphia-based Rosenbluth’s Global Security Suite of travel-information services, offers its 5,000 corporate clients worldwide the tools to locate employees in just seconds through a Web-based interface. The program instantaneously searches Rosenbluth’s extensive traveler database and the airlines’ global distribution system reservation network; it also plots all of a company’s travelers on a world map. Further mouse clicks elicit detailed itinerary information for each employee. The system can also blast messages to all employees on the road.

“On September 11 we went through a resource- and time-intensive process to determine the whereabouts of our travelers worldwide,” says Lisa Meehan, director of travel services for pharmaceuticals maker Merck & Co., whose employees take 40,000 international trips to 125 countries in a normal year. Rosenbluth’s system “enabled us to have this crucial information in real time at our fingertips.”

In addition to the tracking service, Rosenbluth’s security suite provides background information on countries - such as business customs and political conditions - and supplies breaking news pertinent to individual travelers. A typical bulletin might read: “New Orleans International Airport under hurricane watch.”

Rosenbluth is in touch with clients at all hours via such news alerts, which are tailored to a traveler’s itinerary and sent to his or her laptop, BlackBerry or other e-mail-enabled device. The alerts are sorted by urgency. The service also automatically registers U.S. travelers headed abroad with American embassies.

BTI, founded by British travel agency Hogg Robinson and based in Farnborough, England, had been poised to give its new travel-intelligence system a test run when the events of September 11 halted much global travel, stranding some 100,000 employees of BTI’s corporate clients, from Tokyo to New York. So BTI decided to give its PeopleTracker a real trial.

The company kicked the system over on the morning of the attacks and began scanning its own database by several parameters: flight number or airline, flights between particular cities, hotel or car vendor, and so on. By day’s end BTI was able to report the status of all in-transit employees to their respective travel departments and begin the huge job of rebooking them.

American Express Corporate Travel had to make do with an existing PC-based program to try to stay on top of 200,000 discomfited travelers on September 11. It by and large succeeded, despite being displaced from Amex’s downtown headquarters. But the company has since upgraded to an easier-to-use, interactive online system that provides more information on travelers, such as their cell phone and passport numbers.

BTI plans to integrate IJet’s travel intelligence into its PeopleTracker program in the U.S. by this summer and hook up with the system abroad in the future. Two-year-old IJet supplies travel departments and travelers with its own real-time security updates compiled by specialists fluent in 17 languages. The company filters and analyzes the data, which clients can access by e-mail.

IJet has teamed up with Silver Spring, Maryland-based wireless telecommunications provider IMC WorldCell to rent cell phones capable of receiving IJet’s text advisories in more than 130 countries through cellular and satellite networks. The pair hopes the service will attract U.S.-based cell phone users, who often find that their phones don’t work overseas. The one-week introductory WorldLink package - which includes a phone, IJet alerts and an emergency response service - is available for $47.95 plus calls; for $75.95, travelers receive Travel Guard International medical and evacuation insurance.

But what if the warning comes too late, or you choose to ignore it, and you find yourself in the middle of what the British call a sticky situation? That’s where travel consultants like International SOS Assistance - a Singapore-based specialist in medical services, emergency assistance and evacuation - can come in handy.

On September 13 SOS was asked by an Asian financial firm to assist more than 100 of its employees who’d been visiting the firm’s New York offices near Ground Zero at the time of the attacks. After rounding up the shaken group, the company’s personnel attended to their continuing medical and trauma needs and bundled them off to a hotel in Philadelphia. There it helped them replace lost passports and organized flights home, beginning with a charter to London, complete with nurses on board. In all, SOS repatriated 300 castaways stranded in 12 countries after September 11.

“No longer can medical and security assistance be separated from the travel process,” says SOS Online chief operating officer Tim Daniel. More than ever before, he argues, companies must consider advising, protecting and responding to traveling employees’ needs as “a duty of care.”

The most basic kind of care, of course, is making sure that employees survive. Toward that end, London-based Control Risks Group provides political and risk “solutions” and crisis management and “response,” with the stated mission of enabling its clients to succeed in “complex or hostile environments.” Founded in 1975 by veterans of Britain’s elite Special Air Service, CRG has worked in more than 130 countries for more than 5,000 clients, including 86 of the Fortune 100 largest U.S. companies.

Currently, the firm is advising clients to resist retrenching in their international operations and to instead beef up risk management procedures to be able to do “business as normal.”

“Carefully weigh your business requirements against the travel risks,” counsels CRG’s vice president of crisis management, hostage negotiator David Lattin. But once you decide to travel, he says, “be flexible and go with the flow.” And pack extra socks (in your capacious carry-on: see story below).

Mailbag

The longest part of any flight nowadays seems to be checking in your luggage. But savvy travelers have found a way to skirt the serpentine lines at airport baggage counters and security checkpoints: They ship their non-carry-on bags separately, via Federal Express.

Hotels catering to business travelers cite a surge in suitcases arriving courtesy of the overnight shipping specialist. One couple, reports Carlos Lopes, managing director of the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles, FedExed 15 pieces of luggage.

“After the luggage is delivered,” says Lopes, “our bell staff have it unwrapped and waiting for guests when they arrive in their suites.”

Letting FedEx be your porter is not as expensive as you might think. A 40-pound bag shipped overnight from New York to Los Angeles runs $116, while buying your bag a one-way ticket from London or Paris to New York is $216 at the second-day rate.

Many bicoastal commuters, meanwhile, are simply stashing clothes at hotels so that they don’t have to deal with bags at all. The managers of fine hotels favored by veterans of the New York-Los Angeles run say that some frequent guests are leaving entire wardrobes behind.

For travelers who prefer to bring their attire along but still avoid check-in congestion, there’s a new crop of over-the-shoulder carry-on bags. The novel SkyRoll shoulder bag adds a new nonwrinkle to short business trips: The lightweight ballistic nylon garment bag - available in black only - rolls into a plump 22" x 9" tube designed to keep clothes from becoming mussed (available at www.magellans.com for $169).

Tumi’s 3-Zip Expandable Carry-On, at 21" x 13" x 9" (expands to 13"), features three main compartments plus a laptop pouch. Made of sturdy black high-density ballistic nylon, the bag retails for $350. It also comes in leather, at $595.

Although you can no longer bring Swiss Army Brands’ trusty Victorinox pocket knives aboard your flight, the company’s Standard Issue two-compartment bag is almost as versatile: It conveniently doubles as a shoulder bag or a backpack and features a clip-on cell phone holder and a removable garment bag. At 22" x 15" x 4" (expands to 6"), the ballistic nylon bag should fit nicely overhead and discounts for $195. Be sure to check with your airline regarding its carry-on bag regulations, which vary by carrier and class. - L.M.R.

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