Corporate Travel Agencies Scramble With 11th Hour Evacuations Over Ukraine War


Skift Take

Global travel management companies are navigating new travel restrictions that include combat zones and closed airports as they organize emergency evacuations in Ukraine and beyond.

Few travel management companies could have predicted they would be coordinating emergency repatriations so soon after carrying out countless evacuations at the start of the pandemic. But now several are planning operations to help companies and governments move staff out of both Ukraine and Russia. The main challenge is the abruptness of the invasion. International security firm Global Guardian, for example, said on February 24, the day the war began, that a full-scale invasion was unlikely. In its threat assessment it said there was a “15 percent” chance of Russia invading all of Ukraine that moves west of the Dnieper river. “(It) remains unlikely because of unified U.S.-EU blowback against Russian economy,” it said. On Friday, the security firm, which works with international consulting firms, finance companies, technology firms and construction companies in Ukraine,