Increased Terrorism: Travel Pros React

The U.S. State Department issued a warning last month that stepped up the message for U.S. citizens to stay on alert during their travels.

No news there. The department has been sending out these messages for years.

But this time the urgency was palpable.

There hadn’t been such a caution issued for six months and the warning came following a series of beheadings of kidnapped American and British civilians along with air strikes that started in September on ISIL positions.

How are travel professionals reacting?
Some travel agents have increased their communication with clients while tour operators appear to have taken the latest developments in stride.

“We have been working with our customers a lot lately to educate them and hear their concerns,” said Michael MacNair, owner of Alexandria, Va.-based MacNair Travel Management, an American Express agency.

“The Ebola crisis has inspired some of that,” he said. “People do not think risk can happen, but it can. It’s been a little more concerning during the last 30 days and people have been contacting us.”

Have a plan
While MacNair deals mostly with business travel, he said that agents should have an action plan for any clients traveling to some of the more dangerous regions of the world, or even to cities in Europe that might be terrorist targets.

“We had clients who wanted to go to Sudan. We walked them through what the risks were and what insurance they needed to have,” MacNair said.

“They went and had a good time. We were more concerned about medical than security. But it was still risky.”

MacNair emphasized that agents should make sure the tour and ground operators they use are well vetted and experienced.

For his business clients, who routinely travel to potentially dangerous destinations, working with companies that offer intelligence-driven risk management services, is critical.

“They have the intelligence, they are monitoring these situations and they create the protocol we use – who the endangered or injured traveler calls first, what steps they take, what family members and offices get contacted, which hospitals that are equipped; there a lot of issues to be considered. It’s no longer just about having the right vaccines,” he said.

Resuming tours
Many tour operators, meanwhile, don’t appear to be fazed by the elevated State Department alerts and warnings.

Insight Vacations, for one, is preparing to resume tours to Egypt in January after cancelling departures during the Arab Spring uprising in 2011.

“We don’t see a danger, we don’t see spin off groups in Egypt and we don’t see any risk in the areas we are going to,” said John Boulding, Insight Vacations’ CEO.

“We are very cautious and things are very heavily controlled in Cairo and along the Nile. But we would not be going to any deep desert areas or border areas.”

Eyes on the ground
Phillippe Brown, owner of U.K.-based Brown & Hudson, a U.K.-based company, believes that having in-depth knowledge of a country and the right people on the ground makes all the difference.
His company creates custom tours and offers destination expertise in places like South Sudan, Afghanistan and Ethiopia.

“Is ISIL a game changer? Not currently,” said Brown, who recently had a group that wanted to travel to Erbil in the Kurdistan area of northwestern Iraq, but were talked out of it.

“ISIL is focused on spots we are not going to, but if things start up in Morocco or Tunisia we will be paying attention,” he said.

“We know our people; we are not just calling a ground operator somewhere, who then calls a series of suppliers in other cities and hopefully it all comes together,” he added.

“We are close to these people and will speak to them directly and know all the people involved in delivering the experience.”

Sophisticated travelers
Fitsum Berhane Meskal, owner of Los Angeles-based Lion of Judah Travel, hasn’t seen much client concern over traveling to Africa or the Middle East although he specializes in the region and has a constant flow of business and FIT clients heading to Addis Ababa and beyond.

“Most of the people who are headed to northeast Africa and the Gulf regions of the Middle East are either working there, have family there or are otherwise very familiar with the region,” Meskal said.

“I do not think we will see concern for terrorism slowing down the pipeline for travel any time soon,” he added. “However, if a young and not so knowledgeable traveler would wander into my office and want to buy a ticket to Syria, that would be another thing entirely.

“But so far, I think the world is still safe for tourists.”