Recent news that UK passport holders may soon start using e-gates at European airports after five years of post-Brexit border queues was some rare good news for international business travellers. In recent times, barriers have largely been going up rather than coming down as the political mood shifts towards restricting cross-border movement.

Perhaps most striking has been the draconian enforcement of rules for entering President Trump¡¯s United States. In Europe, meanwhile, travel between the Schengen Area and UK is now restricted to 90 days out of 180 in either direction, and many more business trips require visas or permits.

The clampdown is making it harder for companies to send which personnel they like where they like. ¡°Our UK event managers can¡¯t go to the EU to deliver events. And now our EU event managers cannot go to the US to deliver events,¡± a professional services sector travel manager told the Institute of Travel Management annual conference in Newport, Wales, in April.

Stricter enforcement is one reason why better passport and visa management is becoming much more important for travel buyers. Business travellers are rightly less gung ho about winging entry to the USA without a visa if the nature of their visit officially requires one. But ¡°the current wait in the UK for a US visa is 16 weeks, more than double what it used to be,¡± says Samantha McKnight, senior vice president client solutions for visa and immigration specialist CIBT.

At the same time, technology is helping border authorities to increase control. In March this year, the UK extended to EU nationals the Electronic Travel Authorisation process it introduced in October 2023. The Schengen Area plans to launch its own travel authorisation, ETIAS, now delayed to October 2026, for 1.4 billion people from 59 visa-free countries.

Before that will come the European Entry/Exit System in October 2025 that will log exactly how much time UK and other business travellers spend in the Schengen Area, making it easier to enforce the 90/180 days rule.

Border technology doesn¡¯t just monitor travellers, points out Julius Heintz, CEO of consular services company Deutsche Visa und Konsular Gesellschaft (DVKG). It also tracks which border officer has admitted which visitor and therefore pressurises them to stick more rigidly to the rules. ¡°Everybody is covering their backside,¡± Heintz says.

Yet another problem for travel managers is that while the rules around immigration are becoming more complicated, travellers are becoming worse informed. ¡°Travellers, especially younger ones, believe what is on the first page of Google,¡± says Heintz, adding that taking the easy route of reading Google¡¯s artificial intelligence summary is making a bad situation worse.

Heintz has handled cases of business travellers entering the USA confident they only needed an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) and not realising their passport or trip purpose required a B-1 visa. ¡°Sometimes when we research it, we find the information originated from a Facebook post,¡± he says.

All these challenges make a strong case for managing employees¡¯ cross-border movements more systematically. Yet ¡°the number of companies that operate a structured visa programme is quite minimal,¡± says McKnight. ¡°Usually, it¡¯s because they have a large, globally mobile population or have had their fingers burned.¡±

One reason for under-management is that ¡°responsibility for handling visas falls between lots of different departments,¡± the financial services sector travel manager told the ITM conference session.

McKnight agrees, hence her first recommendation to travel managers is to connect with other relevant internal departments. ¡°Keep a conversation going with your mobility team [handling long-term assignments and employee relocation] because in almost every organisation there are cases that fall right in the middle,¡± she says. ¡°Mobility might be sitting there thinking ¡®travel is taking care of that¡¯; travel might be thinking mobility is taking care of it, and in the meantime the traveller is lost and doesn¡¯t know what to do.¡±

Improved communication is also needed with travellers, not least to nudge them to obtain visas or other permissions much earlier in the trip planning proces. In some cases, says Heintz, such as visiting China, ¡°you should start with the visa process before you book anything because you never know if you will get it.¡±

In addition, travellers need accurate information and an efficient permission application mechanism. In this respect, while technology has made immigration more problematic for business travel, it is also providing solutions. The financial services travel manager also speaking at ITM said her travellers are required to submit trip details online, including destination and purpose, and in return they receive information about required visas or work permits.

Her company does not source this information itself. ¡°The expertise doesn¡¯t sit within your organisation, so you have to partner with a third party,¡± she said.

Both CIBT and DVKG are examples of such third parties, and they in turn integrate with the travel eco-system, including travel management companies, global distribution systems and online booking tools. Typically, when a traveller starts an online booking, an automated notification flows to the consular service, which responds with information and additional questions, allowing applications for visas, A1 social security certificates (see below), travel authorisations and so on to begin. An automated process can also track the number of days used up for time allowances in, for example, the Schengen Area.

Whether automated or not, travel managers, says Heintz, must take control of a messy issue they might prefer to avoid. ¡°Immigration is becoming more complicated,¡± he says. ¡°It is too complicated for travellers on their own to decide whether they need a visa.¡±

A1 certificates ¨C The bureaucratic nightmare that won¡¯t disappear

A continuing dilemma for travel managers is how to handle A1 documents, which certify that foreigners working in a European Union or European Free Trade Association (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) country are paying social security dues in their home nation. Although clearly aimed at posted workers (an employee performing a service in another country on a temporary basis), rules tightened in 2019 mean that, in theory, anyone crossing a border for as little as one day should carry an A1 certificate. Companies which transgress can be fined as much as €500,000.

Information on how heavily A1 is policed is patchy and anecdotal, but according to DVKG¡¯s Julius Heintz, checks are especially zealous in Switzerland, and also a particular risk in Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Romania and Sweden; while minimal atttention is paid to A1s in the Baltic states. Industry sector also makes a difference. For example, some construction sites only allow visitors who show an A1.

Travel manager advocacy group BT4Europe is among those lobbying the European Commission to exempt business trips of fewer than 14 days from the A1 requirement. But, according to BT4E treasurer Odete Pimenta da Silva, the Commission is proving reluctant, believing employers are acting pragmatically by simply ignoring the A1 requirement for business trips.

BT4E is preparing a submission which, she says, ¡°show that a lot of companies are filling in the A1 form.¡± It claims, for example, that German companies made 489,000 applications for A1 certificates for short-term business trips in 2022, costing them 82,000 hours in admin time.

Heintz is not confident. ¡°I don¡¯t believe we will see any changes in A1 regulations, especially as the European Parliament has so much on its agenda,¡± he says. He adds that politicians are running scared of making any changes that could be portrayed as softness on cross-border movement.

While this chaotic situation persists, companies must choose between accepting a considerable administrative burden to produce paperwork they may not actually need; or ignoring the issue and hoping to avoid being caught. There is no simple answer. ¡°What is your risk appetite as an organisation?¡± asks CIBT¡¯s Samantha McKnight.