Tag Archives: Egypt

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Business Travelers Refuse Assignments to Dangerous Areas

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When bossess tell employees they have to travel to dangerous locations — effectively asking them to put their company’s profits ahead of personal safety — workers are increasingly saying thanks, but no thanks. According to a new report by the insurer Chubb, nearly one-fourth of people surveyed would refuse to go on a business trip to a location they consider dangerous unless their employer provided them with emergency medical and other services. In all, 23% of business travelers said they would refuse to go on the business trip, 21% said they go but would refuse to go on the next trip, and 14% would go but look for a new job after returning.

Workers apparently become more willing if services are provided, however. If their employer provided access to reliable emergency medical services, 42% said they would go on the assignment, and 47% would travel if their employer provided pre-travel information about the country. If their employer provided access to legal assistance abroad, 38% would agree to go.

“Organizations that fail to address the risks may lose employees as the economy improves, and even face reputational damage and legal liability,” said Jim Villa, senior vice president of Chubb’s accident and health business.

Chubb, not so surprisingly, offers some products and services to mitigate travel to high-risk locations. As do others. I spoke with Charlie LeBlanc, an exec at ASI Group, last year following all the turmoil in Egypt. With Cairo in chaos, he helped several Westerners get out safely.

Here’s an excerpt of the piece I wrote at the time.

Having traveled to Egypt many times, he knew there were many foreign nationals living and working there who would need assistance when the riots broke out. He did not know there were close to 80,000 expats, however. And he never imagined there would be an event so widespread that so many would need his company’s advice at once. “It seemed like all 80,000 were calling at the same time,” said LeBlanc. He expects that this will be the largest event of this type that he will ever come across. “We can’t envision a larger-scope scenario,” said LeBlanc. “You know, short of Armageddon.”

LeBlanc’s company is who you want to call if you are trapped in such a situation. Through a 2008 acquisition, his ASI Group, which was founded in 1989 as Air Security International, became part of MEDEX, a travel assistance and international medical insurance provider that works with insurers including Travelers and Chubb.

Immediately following the unrest in Egypt, the ASI team had some 30 corporate clients seeking consultation on how to keep their employees safe. All told, the company directly chartered more than 800 people out of Egypt in short order.

There were many others who wanted advice but wound up on State Department flights. ASI provided them with information on where they needed to go and how to sign up to get evacuated, but they made final arrangements on their own. LeBlanc does not know how many cases of indirect assistance his firm was involved in. “We stopped even counting,” he said.

For most people, all they wanted was a way out of the country. “When you’re talking to these folks,” said LeBlanc, “they’re frustrated, they’re upset, they’re discouraged and some of them…are worried that they’re not going to be able to get off the ground.”

Situations like this help illustrate that travel assistance services can be of value. The Arab Spring scenario was unprecedented in many ways, but it’s likely that companies working in the Middle East or other treacherous locations may find themselves in need of help when their employees get stuck.

And according to this latest Chubb survey, it will be increasingly harder to even get them to go in the first place if you have no plan to help them out when trouble arises.

Crisis in Egypt: The Economic Repercussions

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The crisis in Egypt can soon turn from a political uprising to an economic catastrophe and humanitarian emergency if things don’t return to normal operation soon.

Shipping

In the port of Alexandria, among others, army tanks stand guard to ensure no one enters the area. Good plan, except that hardly anything is going out, including exports that are crucial to the country’s economy. Though reports claim that some ports are closed, the Suez Canal is apparently open to shipping traffic. Shipping companies, however, are hesitant to enter the area. If the Suez Canal should close, it would not only spell disaster for a country already in serious turmoil, but it would also mean a worldwide shipping disruption.

Production Plants

  • Nissan: the automaker suspended operations Sunday until February 3rd.
  • Unilever: the multinational corporation’s offices in Cairo have been closed since January 28th.
  • General Motors: the car maker’s plant near Cairo has not produced vehicles since January 28th with production estimated to resume Friday, February 4th.
  • Lafarge SA: the a French building materials company has temporarily stopped operations due to the situation. The company has six production sites in Egypt, six quarries and 62 ready-mix plants and employs 8,172 Egyptian workers.
  • Heineken NV: the Dutch brewer has halted operations and told its 2,040 employees in Egypt to stay home.

Tourism

The nation’s tourism sector has taken a huge hit that is expected to last for some time.

Foreigners are struggling to flee the country, tour and cruise companies are seeing cancellations and a growing list of Western and Arab nations are sending in flights to evacuate their nationals. The tourism sector is vital for Egypt — and is among one of the four top sources of foreign revenue for the country.

Tourism accounts for 5 to 6% of the country’s GDP, while Cairo International Airport is the second largest airport in Africa, after Johannesburg, handling 15 million tourists per year.

Call Centers and Online Retail

Egypt is home to numerous call centers and IT outsourcing companies. But little can be done when the government cuts internet access throughout the entire nation. Microsoft is just one of the 120 companies in Cairo’s Smart Village, an area built for major multinational and local, high-tech companies.

Asked about the situation in Egypt, Microsoft said in a written response to a query that it “is constantly assessing the impact of the unrest and Internet connection issues on our properties and services. What limited service the company as a whole provides to and through the region, mainly call-center service, has been largely distributed to other locations.”

Hewlett-Packard is another company with operations in the Smart Village. They have asked their employees there to stay home. Though President Obama has urged the Egyptian government to restore internet access, little has changed for fear that protesters will use social networks to organize further riots. For a country that has taken pride in its growing outsourcing and call center business, the suspension of internet access is taking a huge toll.

All of the above have affected financial markets worldwide. And with a “million man march” planned for tomorrow in the Arab world’s most populous nation, little is expected to change in the near future.

Egyptian Shark Attacks Prompt Insurance Warnings

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A Egyptian tourist website featuring the resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh touts the area as having luxury five-star hotels, exciting water sports and a variety of shopping and entertainment options. What the website doesn’t tell the potential tourist is that the waters off the coast of Sharm El-Sheikh have become home to massive carnivorous creatures known as whitetip and mako sharks, and they’re attacking.

The shark attacks have been blamed for killing one tourist and badly injuring four others in the Red Sea waters off Sharm El-Sheikh during the last week alone. From the beginning, experts have called the attacks highly unusual for the species of shark in question, but that hasn’t quelled the tourist’s fears.

Richard Pierce, chairman of the Shark Trust and the Shark Conservation Society, said: “This spate of attacks is unprecedented. “For either of these species to make repeated attacks on humans is unheard of — they simply do not go around attacking people for fun. “To see so many attacks in such a short space of time is terrifying and very difficult to understand. Behind this, there is undoubtedly some kind of human trigger. “It is also very important to realise that both these species are endangered and you would not expect to see either of them as far north as Sharm el-Sheikh at this time of year.”

Three shark experts from the United States are traveling to Egyptian resort town to “form an advisory team to try to assess and advise on the best course of action following the shark attacks in areas north of Naama Bay this week.”

Because of the recent attacks, the Foreign Commonwealth Office has issued an insurance warning for people traveling to Egypt. The purpose of the warning was to remind travelers to include activities such as diving and snorkeling in their travel insurance coverage.

“Unusually cheap operators may not provide adequate safety and insurance standards,” the FCO said. “Ensure that your travel insurance covers you fully before you dive. Diving beyond the depth limit of your insurance policy will invalidate your cover.”

Authorities have banned water activities for the meantime, which could have an affect on tourism in the Egyptian resort town that many people frequent specifically for its beaches and water sports. The whole episode is frightening and eerily reminiscent of the well-known thriller Jaws.

What’s in a Name?

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As we begin the week, the influenza outbreak continues to gather steam. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 20 countries have officially reported close to 1,000 cases of A (H1N1) influenza infection.

Of these a little more than half are in Mexico, where 25 people have died from the disease. According to the BBC, more than 200 cases have been confirmed among 30 U.S. states, with more expected in the coming days. The disease remains at a level 5 WHO alert, one step below pandemic status.

With news like this, it’s easy to over-react. But it pays to keep some things – like the disease’s relatively low death rate thus far – in perspective.

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After all, this disease has also caused a fair amount of collateral damage. While the WHO does not encourage full-bore border closings or national travel restrictions as a reaction to the outbreak, it does suggest that people who are already ill should delay international travel.

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Likewise, groups such as RIMS have suggested restricting nonessential travel, and numerous airlines have reduced flights and have gone to using smaller planes.

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Mexico has been particularly hard hit by all of this, as would be any nation that relies on tourism income to any appreciable degree. Toronto certainly learned that the hard way during its experience with SARS.

Perhaps the most dramatic, and most unnecessary, reaction to the outbreak thus far has been the nationwide swine cull in Egypt, which illustrated just how hard the pork industry has been hit by this, and by extension, the secondary businesses (e.g., restaurants, grocery stores) it deals with.  Last week, the WHO advised against referring to the outbreak any further as “swine flu,” since it raised inaccurate notions over the safety of pork products. The European Union has done likewise.

This blog will also do the same, referring to the disease henceforth by its proper name, influenza A (H1N1). This denotes that the current influenza outbreak is a type-A H1N1 virus. To prevent further confusion, this blog has also edited past posts to change the name of the disease where necessary.