The APEC Business Travel Card surveys: Moving APEC’s businesspeople

The ABTC is one of APEC's great success stories: it contributes to APEC's goal of free and open trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific.

While advances in telecommunications have helped forge business relationships throughout the region, there is no substitute for face to face meetings. Mobility of business people remains crucial for companies’ success, especially those trading across borders.

That’s one of the key reasons why APEC developed the APEC Business Travel Card (ABTC) – to move the region’s businesspeople quickly and efficiently throughout the Asia-Pacific. APEC is now surveying cardholders and applicants to make this important tool even more effective.

With the ABTC, bona fide business travelers skip the line ups and consular visits, saving valuable time and money for their companies. This is especially important for smaller businesses who may find it difficult to spare the extra staff or incur additional costs.

Essentially, this card serves as a pre-cleared multiple-entry visa valid for all participating APEC economies, with the added perk of using specially-designated “fast track” immigration lanes at major international gateways.

This means that an ABTC holder can hop on a plane at a moment’s notice and travel from Shanghai to Santiago with fewer delays due to immigration processing.

Today nearly 90,000 cardholders enjoy the benefits of the ABTC – and interest in the scheme continues to grow.

“The ABTC is one of APEC's great success stories: it contributes to APEC's goal of free and open trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific, and shows how practical cooperation can be achieved," said Stephen Allen, Chair of the APEC Business Mobility Group (BMG) which oversees the ABTC scheme.

APEC’s BMG is dedicated to working on initiatives that improve immigration processing for faster, smoother travel, as well as more effectively ensuring passenger safety and border security.

The ABTC also helps to enhance border integrity by providing benefits to border agencies as it increases the number of low-risk travelers – each applicant is checked against ‘watch lists’ of other participating economies in the scheme. This means the card creates savings not just for businesspeople, but for governments too.

Not content with these benefits, APEC is currently focused on improving the ABTC scheme through the ABTC Client Satisfaction and New Applicant Surveys.

A key area of focus is finding ways to shorten and simplify procedures for renewing an ABTC. The goal here is to manage the growth of the scheme, while maintaining the benefits it affords to travelers.

In collaboration with the APEC Policy Support Unit, the BMG is spearheading the multi-lingual survey to get valuable feedback on the ABTC scheme from existing card holders and new applicants.

“Getting feedback on-the-ground from business travelers themselves will be invaluable. And for us to ensure a robust estimation of the ABTC’s benefits, we need feedback from cardholders – and new applicants too,” says Ramonette Serafica, Senior Analyst at the APEC Policy Support Unit.

“We’re keen to hear what business travelers have to say and find out how the scheme has actually helped businesses reduce trade transaction costs in line with the goal of APEC’s Second Trade Facilitation Action Plan.”

The plan is heading towards achieving a 5 percent reduction in trade transaction costs ‘at-the-border’. An assessment of this achievement will be completed in 2011.

Importantly, the surveys will examine business travel patterns of both ABTC holders and non-ABTC holders to compare the differences in monetary and time costs incurred, thereby measuring the benefits of the scheme.

English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Vietnamese versions of the surveys are currently available on the APEC website, and they will run until early July 2011. Responses are filed anonymously and the survey results will be used to further develop client service standards and to identify new ways to improve the scheme.

All businesspeople from fully participating APEC economies – with or without the card – that travel frequently within the APEC region are strongly encouraged to participate in this survey.