Globaldev careers: The travel manager

BARCELONA — From the headquarters of International Medical Corps in Los Angeles, Larry Bague coordinates travel for more than 7,000 global staff members and volunteers. For 16 years, Bague has managed the flights and complex visa requirements that enable response teams to enter countries at challenging times. Recently, that has included assisting the World Food Programme’s aviation service for humanitarian workers and organizations during the COVID-19 response. Coming from the private sector, one of the initial hurdles was learning the ins and outs of the humanitarian sector, its players, and its jargon. Back then, staff travel was also coordinated and tracked via emails and Microsoft Word documents. The development of an in-house platform has since made this part of the job easier, but many challenges remain in getting teams and equipment on the ground quickly to respond to a crisis — and then make a swift exit if the security situation changes. Bague, who serves as IMC’s senior manager of travel and facilities, spoke to Devex about the role and the skills it requires. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. What is the job of a travel manager working with a humanitarian organization? [You] work with a lot of different departments — it's not just booking a trip, but you're also coordinating with various departments and our own approval systems. Before we even send somebody out to the field, they'll go through an onboarding process. … Then you're overseeing your vendors, your whole travel agency network, you're making sure that all of your offices in the U.S., Europe, and globally are set up on the same kind of service platform so you're able to track everybody. On the travel side, you're dealing with people that are either going out to the field or going to training or visiting different offices. We’re managing that process through our own in-house approval system and making sure all of that goes through the full deployment cycle … to ensure safety and that all of the travel guidelines [of the organization and the donors] and compliance are adhered to. We work closely with our security department … so everybody is tied in anytime a travel agent or ticket is issued. And we also work through our insurance carrier that has a module to track travel. So at any given point in time, we know where our people are. We also work with security on identifying banned airlines or areas that we need to hold off deployments on because of security reasons, [such as] elections. What are the biggest challenges of the job, and how do you overcome these? A lot of it [comes down to] just being patient because … there can be constant change. And so something that you may be working on will change last minute, and you'll have to adjust on the fly. And you can imagine when [there is a change], there's a lot involved in an international deployment. Besides finding a new itinerary that's going to work and that's in compliance, it's also coordinating with the departments here and security and field teams to make sure that everybody's aware of this person traveling and that everybody gets picked up in their final destination. With any change, there's a kind of a ripple effect. One of the biggest [challenges is around] passports. The climate is always changing in a lot of the countries that we go to, so we’re in contact with a lot of the local ministries on what their requirements are. And some passports are [seen as] friendlier than others. … So it's being sensitive to that. How do you see the impact of your work? We just had our annual gala [virtually] … and that is always a good reminder of what we do, because you can get caught up behind your computer ... and forget what you're involved in. And when I look back at all of the big natural disasters ... or the response when the Haiti earthquake happened — where we ended up rotating around 600 people in eight months — that was insane. … You were just around the clock working to get people out the door. That was followed by the Nepal earthquake, then Ebola followed that. I had a team of five at that time, but I ended up having a team of 11 or 12 just because of [that] response. Thinking back to those big natural disasters [or emergency responses], you think, “Yeah, I was part of that,” … because everybody that’s there [on the ground], that volunteered or is participating in that reponse, went through us. How have you seen your role and scope of work change over the years? In the beginning, I was also focused a lot on [questions like] … “What's the best way to route people to get to their destination?” and “Do we have the right agreements in place with all of our different vendors?” But over the years and with changing our service platform, I don't need to concentrate on that, [and we] have travel agencies that specialize in humanitarian travel. So my role has grown to be more [about] tying the pieces together … and making sure that I'm feeding the right information [to the right departments]. It's more about … looking outside of what I do to figure out what other people need. What advice would you have for other professionals interested in this type of work? It's about learning [about the sector] and [focusing] on that communication piece. Can you do the job without upsetting people and [deal with] all the different changes and other restrictions as the gatekeeper of our approval system? And can you push back diplomatically? Those communication skills are probably just as important as anything else. What should someone know before pursuing this kind of role? It's 24/7. You really have to work on [having a] work-life balance to do this job. A lot of our emergencies or programs are in the Middle East or Africa, so a lot of times I may log off at 2 or 3 o'clock [in the afternoon, having started at 6 a.m.] — but I know I'm going to be logging on around 10 or 11 [p.m. that night]. ... When it's an emergency, regardless of where it happens, you have to be available to coordinate it.