ACTE - Survey

ON THE ROAD

Travel Managers Confront Crises

By JOE SHARKEY

LAS VEGAS -- With acres of fawning marble statues and fake-frescoed vaulted ceilings, the 3,000-room Venetian Hotel resembles a version of the Vatican designed by Franco Zeffirelli.

It's a weird setting for more than a thousand corporate travel managers to be assembled, struggling to hash out more effective ways to respond to the serial crises that have been hammering their profession for two years. But these are strange times.

Let us begin with severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. At the start of its annual conference here yesterday, the Association of Corporate Travel Executives released a survey showing that 79 percent of its members believe that SARS, not terrorism or issues related to the Iraq war, is the No. 1 business travel concern. Moreover, 62 percent of those said that they believed that the travel industry as a whole had reacted with excessive panic to the SARS threat.

"Dividing the total number of people who fly by the total number of people affected with SARS produces an insignificant statistic," said Mark A. Williams, the president of the organization.

Still, because of uncertainty about its medical origins and fear about the ability of the virus to quickly spread around the world on airlines, in an atmosphere where corporate travel managers and airlines have been unable to coordinate a measured, focused response, "the result has been the instantaneous deterioration of the business travel and tourism industry in Asia," Mr. Williams said.

Until the SARS outbreak in March, the only places business travel was growing fairly robustly were the Pacific Rim and South Asia. The speed with which that growth hit the skids, and the confused and often contradictory reactions to the threat, should sound an alarm to the corporate travel industry, Mr. Williams said.

Corporate travel managers, who have a lot to say about the disposition of much of the more than $150 billion that is spent on domestic business travel each year, cannot sit back passively any longer and wait for clarification or improvement as new crises arrive, Mr. Williams added. They need to act more boldly as a group, he said.

He argued that even as it appears to be waning, the SARS furor is providing the industry with a prime opportunity to sit down with government officials, airline executives, international health officials and others. The idea would be to develop comprehensive plans for companies to use in dealing with travel-related international health crises, as well as the chronic financial turmoil in the airline business.

"The association has decided that we have to play a far more vocal role in getting some of these issues resolved," said Jack Riepe, a spokesman.

On the health threats, the group announced yesterday that it had begun intensive lobbying to achieve closer relationships with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Transportation Security Administration, the World Health Organization and other groups. The goals, Mr. Williams said, are to draft uniform, viable responses to future travel-related outbreak of SARS or similar infectious diseases. This will require, he said, a coordinated approach by government, airlines and businesses to treat and contain an epidemic, to evaluate correctly and publicize accurately the extent of any threat, and to come up with procedures for preventive measures like diagnosing a victim or cleaning an infected airplane.

"One of the things that caught our attention was, there is no uniform way to sanitize an aircraft," Mr. Riepe said, adding rhetorically: "Which is the best way for eliminating the virus? Is it Lestoil, or is it whatever's on sale?"

A second initiative announced by the group is a push to deal unilaterally on industrywide issues with airlines. Mr. Williams said the group planned to meet with airline executives to insist on a "realistic operating philosophy" that corporate travel managers can understand and support. The group also wants an audit of the airline industry to assess travel demand and product development, as well as a comprehensive long-term plan for dealing with war, disease and business slumps.

Besides exerting strong influence on existing travel spending, corporate travel managers in recent years have become far more influential in many companies, as once loose travel policies have tightened and new technology has provided greater control over travel. And while nobody here is willing to bet the ranch on it, there are real indications that business travel is picking up again, both domestically and internationally.

In a business travel forecast by the travel organization and Runzheimer International to be released this week, 60 percent of corporate travel managers reported growing signs that their travel budgets for 2003 had not changed (34 percent) or had actually increased (26 percent) from last year. "The downturn may have bottomed out finally," Mr. Williams said.

Still, there are no sure bets, especially on the airlines. Mr. Riepe, for example, said that he and his partner, Leslie Marsh, a communications associate with the group, remained so weary of what he called the "airport, airline hassle" that they drove to Omaha, Neb., for a business event earlier this month from their home near Philadelphia.

"She has a nice little sports car, and we almost decided to drive it out here to Vegas," Mr. Riepe said.

Reluctantly, Ms. Marsh decided they should fly. "I mean, we just drove back from Omaha two weeks ago," she said.

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