For the Business Traveler Worried About Security: You’re Not Alone<br />One panelist, Julia Fidler, who manages travel for Microsoft, said, “We’re definitely seeing<br />more requests from travelers who ask, ‘Tell me what to do; who do I go to to ask?’”<br />She added, “They still want to talk to somebody, know what number to dial, and if there will be somebody there to assist them.”<br />A recent study by the association on how current geopolitical issues are affecting travel found<br />that of the 239 corporate travel managers surveyed, 56 percent said they had seen an increase in reports of heightened personal safety concerns in late 2016 and early this year.<br />“In the last six months, it’s gone from a simmer to a boil,” said Evan Konwiser, a vice president at American Express Global Business Travel, who moderated<br />a session at a recent Association of Corporate Travel Executives conference in New York on how to support and protect business travelers.<br />“The pace of change is faster now than ever before<br />and reaching to more regions not traditionally considered high risk,” Greeley Koch, executive director at the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, said in an interview.<br />For many travelers, he added, buying supplemental coverage has “not been top of mind.”<br />The industry trend, Mr. Carnicelli said, is to make policies easier to understand<br />and provide coverage “more tailored toward individual travel needs.” Identify theft protection, for example, is increasingly important in some countries.
