Interview with : Antoine Delesalle, Sales Director, Amex GBT

Is it still necessary to make a business trip to a distant destination, given the uncertainties surrounding the pandemic rules?

Antoine Delesalle - The pandemic has had a profound effect on companies' approach to business travel. In most cases, business travel is only undertaken if it is perceived to be essential. Comfort" business trips are effectively banned. After that, it all depends on the company's activity. For example, the building and public works sector or the signing of major commercial contracts requires a local presence. But the obstacles to business travel are quite considerable, because travellers now have to comply with two health regulations: those of their company and those of the country they are visiting. There is also a third party responsible for the traveller's safety. So travellers have to deal with three or four different people. The company has to act quickly to make a decision in this complex Covid context.

So is the context still a deterrent because of the uncertainties of quarantine or changing rules?

A. D. - Yes, because companies are faced with a travel environment that is not static, where health regulations are rapidly influencing travel "consumption". For example, in 2021, companies will have stayed away from the United States for most of the year. But as soon as constraints were eased, demand rebounded. The same phenomenon was observed in the United Kingdom.

What is Amex GBT doing to mitigate this instability in travel policies?

A. D. - As a TMC (Travel Management Company), our primary duty is to provide information and support. And we've been working hard on these concepts since 2020. We monitor health conditions in a given situation in real time. That's why we launched Travel Vitals, a dynamic information platform which provides travellers and travel organisers with a platform that centralises all the data they need before, during and after a business trip. We try to ensure that there are no unpleasant surprises for the traveller. In fact, it's widely used by our customers. We have also invested in our NEO booking platform by creating Covid tablets. These provide essential information for planning a trip. Finally, with Whatsapp, we have set up a chat service. It allows our customers to connect at any time and get an immediate response. And it's people talking to people. Our role is to support businesses through information, technology and people...

What can you do in the event of forced quarantine? Do you offer insurance services?

A. D. - As a TMC, we don't work with individuals but with companies. What happens in the case of an imposed quarantine is that the individual will turn to his or her company, and the company in turn will contacted his insurer which generally insures the whole company. We don't offer insurance, because that's not our role. On the other hand, we are always there to provide information and to relieve the individual of the administrative problems... Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, Amex GBT has handled some 35,000 repatriations.