Driving growth and recovering in a disrupted world...
How shipping and marine organisations can navigate the future
Under the theme of ‘driving growth and recovering in a disrupted world’, this year’s London International Shipping Week promises to explore how the shipping industry can balance its post-Covid recovery with the desire for growth.
In this short but practical piece, ATPI Marine & Energy’s team of in-house experts will share what they think marine and shipping organisations should implement within their travel programme in order to be best placed to navigate the future of the sector.
An holistic approach to a complicated crew travel process
Marjan van Vliet, commercial head of ATPI Marine & Energy, talks about the need to focus on excellent service delivery every step of the journey:
Booking flights for crew has always required taking an holistic approach that considers all stages of the journey, but the outbreak of Covid-19 has made this all the more important.
Marine and shipping organisations should ensure that their TMC can provide guidance on all restrictions and regulations and how these can affect crew, as protocols vary depending on destination and origin country. Providing the correct PCR test advice per crew member is critical, as is understanding entry restrictions and booking quarantine hotels. The limited capacity of many airlines also presents challenges, which is why ATPI Marine & Energy have worked closely with clients to provide practical and cost-effective charter solutions.
Although restrictions and regulations can change rapidly, ATPI Marine & Energy clients can rely on our Sherpa tool and ATPI Alerts service to provide the most up-to-date and relevant information for crew change destinations.
Continue to push for greater efficiency
Jochem Hemink, head of sales shipping in Europe and Asia at ATPI Marine & Energy, talks about how process efficiencies can still be achieved despite the challenges set by the pandemic:
The key to creating a more efficient crew change management process is to integrate the various systems that your organisation currently uses to arrange crew travel. Connecting your crew and travel management software in such a way that personal and travel data is shared seamlessly will eliminate the need to add data manually, simultaneously saving time and reducing the risk of human error.
Integrating technology will also give crew managers greater control to make the changes that they need, as it will give them real-time visibility of travel bookings, approval requests, out of policy alerts and direct access to each booking. Whilst you rely on travel experts that identify the optimal balance between cost, schedule and convenience, your crew managers will focus on their core tasks and make more crew changes happen in less time.
Understanding the total cost of a crew change
Nikos Gazelidis, chief commercial officer for marine at ATPI Marine & Energy, shares how ATPI Marine & Energy can assist shipping and marine organisations in understanding the total cost of their crew changes:
Additional safety protocols and the growing complexity of international travel have resulted in increasing costs of the shipping industry’s fragmented and rather manual crew travel cycle. However, an inclusive, fully integrated and proactive approach to crew travel logistics can be the solution to this. A solution that would be able to capture the total cost of a crew change and anticipate higher costs’ mitigation with cost and efficiency savings.
These savings can be achieved through the use of a unique crew logistics platform and will be the result of:
- Proactive planning and selection of optimum crew change locations
- Seamless, error-free, end-to-end workflow management of the entire crew change cycle
- Effective control and constant adjustment of travel patterns
Direct access to relevant analytics and travel data
Fran Blackburn, director of marine partnerships at ATPI Marine & Energy, discusses the importance of analysing your organisation’s travel data and how doing so will enable your organisation to be better prepared for the future:
Over the last eighteen months there have been many headlines announcing the increasing cost of crew changes due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This has created a climate of concern within the sector, with many weary of the effect of spiralling costs and inefficiencies, and could contribute to ‘Covid complacency’ - in which each and every change or increase is attributed to the pandemic by default.
Therefore, it’s essential for marine and shipping organisations to take the time to truly understand their travel data and appreciate how accurate and relevant analytics remain a vital element in managing the budget of a vessel. ATPI Marine & Energy also recommends implementing peer group benchmarking exercises as a particularly relevant way of understanding cost increases.
Staying up-to-date with airlines and airfare trends
Eleftheria Letsiou, head of global account management at ATPI Marine & Energy, discusses how important it is for those within the marine and shipping sector to understand the trends and changes within airfares and how these can affect crew changes:
The landscape of the marine and shipping sectors has been volatile for the last eighteen months and that uncertainty looks set to continue even as the pandemic starts to stabilise in some parts of the world. Understanding what this could look like in terms of flight availability, the cost of airfares and the logistics of crew changes is vital when forecasting travel spend and budgets.
For example, ATPI Marine & Energy have found that over the last year overall average airfares increase for Filipino and Indian crew was 61%, travel within Europe saw the least fluctuations at 12% average airfare increase overall and crew change air cost at US ports had the lowest average increase at 18%. You can find a more in-depth analysis of regional changes in our full report here.
Planning your approach to ESG and sustainability
Pippa Ganderton, Director of Global Account Management at ATPI, talks about ESG and how ATPI Marine & Energy can assist shipping and marine clients to navigate a more sustainable future:
There is much focus on shipping and the carbon footprint left by the marine transportation of goods globally. Aside from vessel emissions, the movement of crew, inspectors and other critical personnel to man and manage those vessels creates its own travel related carbon footprint. ATPI is working with clients to measure, reduce and offset these emissions by:
- Managing your travel so that we are able to measure the emissions generated through your travel programme
- Making recommendations to reduce your CO2 footprint and provide CO2 calculations at point of sale
- Collaborating to manage your offset programme for unavoidable travel with integrity, transparency and flexibility
Three unavoidable steps if maritime targets for carbon neutrality by 2050 are to be achieved.
