How New Leadership Policies Can Affect Your Travelers

A couple of weeks ago, President Trump signed an executive order banning travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries, presenting a number of challenges for those in the travel space. Since changes in leadership can result in uncertainty for organizations across the globe, GBTA recently held a webinar to prepare travel professionals in the event of foreign policy changes.

GBTA Risk Committee Chair Erin Wilk moderated a panel of travel security, travel management and immigration law experts as they discussed the implications of foreign policy changes on business travel in a webinar entitled Executive Orders – How New Leadership Policies Can Affect Your Travelers and What You Can Do.

International SOS Regional Security Director Matt Bradley kicked things off by defining what an executive order is from a legally-binding standpoint. He walked through a timeline of events surrounding the travel ban, noting the ensuing chaos for airlines, airports, and organizations due to the lack of clarification in the order’s implementation. Matt shared, “People were on planes, people were landing at international airports, arriving at immigration windows and being detained immediately because they were from certain countries.”

Rotary International Former Global Travel Manager Robert Mintz then offered advice from a travel manager’s perspective on best practices for these types of situations. Erin noted that the practices could also be broadly applied to future incidents.

To wrap things up, Foster LLP Attorney at Law and Partner Corina Farias shared what organizations can do from a legal perspective in order to protect their travelers. She stressed the importance of being proactive and developing a corporate business action plan to be better prepared in future situations.

GBTA members may view the webinar in full through the Hub. These sessions are just around the corner:

• Proven Trade Show Basics Haven’t Changed… Learn How to Best Maximize Them to Work for You! (Wednesday, February 22 – 2:00 PM ET)
• GBTA New Resource Tools – Managed Travel Index® and Sustainability in Travel Self-Assessment (Thursday, February 23 – 2:00 PM ET and Tuesday, February 28 – 1:00 PM GMT)
• Hotel Billing – Opportunities & Advancement (Thursday, March 16 – 2:00 PM ET)

The full schedule of webinars is available here.