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Drug Wars, Press Coverage & Lost Business Opportunity
Blog on International Security, Risk/Threat Analysis • posted 02/20/12
The U.S. State Department has issued travel advisories for areas of Mexico in the past, but the alert it broadcast Feb. 8 was unique in scope. Replacing an earlier warning from last April, the new government advisory cautions against nonessential travel to part or all of 14 Mexican states.
Mexico's top domestic security official called the U.S. travel warning—on nearly half of Mexico's states—"ridiculous" and "out of proportion." The State Department said the warning stems from 47,500 deaths attributed to drug-related violence since 2006.
An alert from the State Department is one piece of information that companies can use to inform decisions regarding business travel. Media reports are another important input. However, if you base decisions on just these two sources, you could end up missing important business opportunities.
Attention on Mexico’s drug wars is causing companies to overestimate the threat and put deals on hold—harming their business interests, according to Samuel Logan, regional manager for Latin America at iJET, an international risk management consultancy. From general media coverage, companies fail to appreciate that violence in Mexico is discriminate, said Logan. “The people dying in Mexico are overwhelmingly dying because they are involved in some way in the drug trade.”
The media has always had a tendency to pile on to specific stories, and this myopic focus not only ensures that some threats are overblown but also that some go underreported. Caracas, Venezuela, is probably more worrisome than Juarez, Mexico, for example. Murder is more common in the Mexican city, but the indiscriminate nature of the violence in Caracas makes it a more significant threat to businesses, traveling employees, and ex-pats. Less sexy stories get ignored altogether. One story line in Mexico—rarely reported—is the investment of cash-rich criminals in legitimate businesses. For American companies working with business partners in Mexico this is probably a bigger concern than drug-related violence.
Who’s Job Is It Anyway?
Companies with a large population of business travelers shouldn’t exclusively rely on general media reports and government alerts for intelligence and risk assessment. A subscription to a travel threat information service and/or a relationship with an international crisis management firm can help fill in the threat information gaps and put news stories into context for an organization.
But it does bring up a question: Who oversees this process? IOFM asked hundreds of large companies to get the answer.
| Entity/Department in Charge of Monitoring Travel Security Threats | |
|---|---|
| Security | 39.8% |
| Contract security/risk firm | 3.5% |
| Human resources | 3.9% |
| Risk management | 8.7% |
| In-house travel | 3.9% |
| Travel agent/contract travel services company | 7.8% |
| Traveling employee’s dept. manager of representative | 16.0% |
| Not monitored/None | 7.8% |
| Other | 8.7% |
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