Why You Need 24/7 Support for Travelling Staff (More than Ever)

As an Executive Assistant, you are the central support system for your C-level staff. This is an all-encompassing role, requiring your undivided attention around the clock and a great degree of after-hours work. Most EA’s know the feeling of newly arriving for a dinner reservation, only to then constantly leave the table to handle a work emergency.

One element that demands a significant quota of an EA’s time is travel management, so everything from arranging flights to booking hotels, organising visas to post-trip expense management. However, the nature of travel is erratic, unpredictable and intermittent and things going wrong is completely out of your hands. No matter how sound your plans are, flights are cancelled, suppliers go bankrupt, natural disasters occur and all while you’re in a totally different time zone, trying to fit in at least 5 hours of sleep every night.

Every company has a duty of care to their employees and travel is no exception. The fact is, all travel - even short-term travel to familiar overseas locations for meetings and conferences – involves a level of risk.

More so, in this time of global uncertainty, travelling has become a cause of anxiety for many people. With acts of terror shutting down major cities, hurricanes and cyclones grounding flights and increasing threats to cyber security and safety, travellers have growing concerns with packing their bags and jetting across the world.

So why do you need round the clock help?

Traveller’s gain a sense of comfort from having 24/7 assistance available to them from the palm of their hand. In the instance when a traveller needs help and they are thousands of miles from home, hearing a familiar voice on the other end at any time of the day is not just helpful, it’s reassuring.

While you can’t be on call all the time, an experienced Travel Management Company has staff who are trained to handle emergency situations on call 24/7/365. They’ll know your company, your people and your travel program and be on call whenever you need them, wherever you are in the world. For example, during the recent hurricane in Florida, QBT received a notification first from our international SOS supplier then ran a report to find all travellers in the vicinity. Our after hours team, who are based in Australia in our Melbourne office, responded to the calls with all resources at their disposal, as none of them work remotely. These consultants then contacted affected travellers to find out if they needed to be repatriated or if they needed to make alternate travel arrangements. Due to the constant feed of international risks and advanced traveller tracking, most travellers were contacted by QBT and not the other way around. Additionally, our after-hours team based in Melbourne were ready to assist all clients who had any other changes or arrangements that needed to be made.

24/7 traveller assistance shouldn’t be underestimated or overlooked, as it not only alleviates traveller apprehensions, it also relieve the stress and pressure off EA’s managing travel for staff.

We know that you have a lot going on, so if you want to know how QBT can offer you ‘round the clock support, click here to get in touch.