Acts of terror are unlikely to stop business travellers hitting the road
By J.C.C.
LAST week this writer was presented with a dilemma. While preparing to travel to an event within walking distance of the recent suicide bombing in Istanbul, news broke of the attacks taking place in Brussels. Alongside the feeling of revulsion, a question briefly arose: should I travel to the site of one recent terror attack just as another is taking place?
Brussels caught the West's collective attention, but in many ways it is Turkey that gives more cause for alarm. The attack in Istanbul on March 19th was the fourth such incident this year. The grim truth is that it may well not be the last. As the BBC apocalyptically opined: “Turkey finds itself in the midst of a hideous vortex of overlapping security crises, struggling to tackle one without exacerbating another. With each bombing, the precariousness of Turkey's situation seems even more acute.”
Any doubt was momentary, however. Flights, meetings and hotels had all been booked. Despite the background threat there was no compelling reason not to travel. In the end it was no dilemma at all.
Because they spend so much time on the road, business travellers are more desensitised to the threats that international travel can bring. Many will quite logically argue that traffic accidents pose a greater threat than a terrorist act. Less logically, some also convince themselves that their travel savviness gives them a sixth sense that enables them to spot and avoid dangerous situations, an argument that holds little water in the case of random bomb attacks on busy locations.
Underpinning any bravado is the simple fact that people do what their job expects. (Although some can take this bravado to its limits. Witness the British man on a work trip who was taken hostage this week on an Egypt Air flight, who posed for a jolly selfie with his captor, replete with a suicide belt—although the explosives were later found to be fake.) Switching holiday destinations might be considered prudent, but pulling out of a pre-arranged business trip will be viewed less sympathetically by employers. Exceptions are only likely in extreme circumstances. When it comes down to it, business travellers have little choice in where or when they go.
In any case, taking the train each day into the office in central London—a city no doubt near the top of plenty of terrorists’ list of dream targets—holds just as much risk as going on any business trip. And although the official government advice was to avoid the Beyoglu area of Istanbul that was my destination, the enhanced security following the bombing meant that it was probably the safest place in the city. Indeed, just a few days after being targetted, Istiklal Avenue was as crowded as ever. The boarded up shopfront and makeshift shrine to those who lost their lives soon disappeared. With acts of terror becoming a worrying normality, Istanbulites, like many business travellers, just want to get on with their jobs.
