Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year – that’s the all-round access Reed & Mackay clients across the globe have to worldwide incident alerts that could affect travel plans and traveller safety.
As well as access to our proprietary technology R&M/Protect – a unique travel risk platform powered by global risk intelligence provider Crisis24 – clients are also continuously updated by an in-house Incident Management Unit (IMU) that is ready to step in immediately to communicate where any incidents are occurring.
“Having an in-house IMU means clients who have signed up to receive our alerts are always connected,” IMU Team Lead Michelle Harrison says. “As our incident response is not an outsourced service it means someone is always dedicated to constantly monitoring anything that could affect clients’ travel plans, which – especially in today’s geopolitical landscape – is crucial.”
This incident management process highlights anything that could affect travellers as quickly as possible. These range from bad weather, transport disruption and strikes to security incidents, natural disasters, plus health and visa updates. In the last year alone, the IMU team sent around 3,000 travel alerts to clients.
How the incident management unit works
Our IMU monitors worldwide incidents and events through global news feeds between 5.30am and 9pm. After 9pm the International IMU Support Team starts its day, so there is always someone on call 24 hours, should the Emergency Travel Service (ETS) – which monitors alerts during the night – report a major incident.
When an incident occurs, the IMU team verifies the information by at least two sources and contacts consultants and clients directly to provide them with useful and practical advice. This means clients are always kept informed and updated wherever they are in the world and are provided with comprehensive and thorough alternatives, ensuring they always get to where they need to be.
The team is also involved in compiling and regularly updating country risk assessments, destinations deemed to be ‘at risk’ by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. If a client signs up to receive at-risk notifications, an email will generate to the travel manager specified, advising if one of their travellers has made a booking to an ‘at risk’ destination.
The IMU team uses a wide variety of sources so information is provided quickly and, most importantly, accurately, 24/7/365.
We take a look back at some of the challenging events over the last 12 months the IMU team has alerted clients to.
Flight cancellations
When the airline FlyBe ceased trading in January 2023, all its scheduled flights were cancelled, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded.
This event happened on a Saturday morning, outside normal office hours. Yet, within a few minutes of the news coming through, the IMU quickly ran reports detailing who was affected by the cancelled flights and arranged for Reed & Mackay consultants to reach out to travellers, offering alternative flights and advice regarding their cancelled flights.
Speed and accuracy were even more crucial at this stage, as many passengers aside from Reed & Mackay clients would be affected and would be searching for new flights too. Thanks to the IMU team’s proactive approach, Reed & Mackay’s impacted clients were contacted within a few hours of the announcement and all those that required alternative flights were rebooked by the end of the day.
As one client says: “I was very impressed with Reed & Mackay over this weekend. Last week they booked a business trip for me to Dublin for the Wednesday to Thursday, which included a final leg to my home in Cornwall on a FlyBe flight from London Heathrow. They contacted me within a few hours of FlyBe announcing it was going into administration over the weekend, offering me alternative options, which were all booked and confirmed by Saturday evening. Very impressed!”
Natural disasters
Turkey and Syria were hit by devastating earthquakes in February. “While no clients had travelled there at the time, there was a lot of disruption to flights to Istanbul,” Harrison explains. “IMU monitored if any clients were affected by the disruption. This incident occurred over the weekend. Whereas we would usually alert our operations desks during the week to contact the client and travellers, IMU contacts travellers directly over the weekend and any itinerary changes are then handled by our ETS.”
In March, there was a strong earthquake in Guayaquil, Ecuador; Reed & Mackay had a traveller en route to the city. As well as sending an alert to the client and checking his flight status, the IMU team also contacted his hotel for local information about the extent of the earthquake. It continued this dialogue throughout the day, to see if there had been any aftershocks.
The summer months witnessed a number of fierce forest fires and a rise in unhealthy air quality in the US and Canada. “This was affecting New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other key cities where a lot of our travellers go,” Harrison says. “We always use official sources to verify any alerts we send. Sometimes we see incidents reported from media sources, which we subscribe to, yet we ask our alert provider Crisis 24 to confirm and verify from official sources before we compile an alert.”
Strikes and protests
This year the IMU has been monitoring and informing Reed & Mackay’s operations teams and clients around the large number of strikes and protests that have taken place across Europe and the UK.
“UK rail strikes have been ongoing throughout the year; while the unions give three weeks’ notice here, in other countries strikes can happen without any warning,” Harrison explains. “But it’s not just train travel that rail strikes can impact. These inevitably lead to congestion on the roads, which we alert clients to. Plus we alert them on all the strikes and protests around climate change or pension reform, like those seen across France and Germany over the last year, which also impact travel.”
Geopolitical events
When the devastating events in Israel and Gaza began, clients understandably wanted to know if they had any of their travellers already there or due to go in the next few weeks.
“Clients also wanted to be kept informed which travellers they had in the whole Middle East region,” Harrison adds. “As soon as we had any updates, we contacted everybody we could to ensure someone was getting in touch with the traveller. Thankfully we received responses from everyone travelling.”
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