Travel firms 'unsure' about their disaster recovery plans

A third of IT managers and users in the travel sector are "unsure" that their disaster recovery plans would work successfully after a technology failure.

Data centre hosting firm City Lifeline interviewed 105 attendees at this year’s Travel Technology show to measure disaster recovery plans in the travel industry.

The survey found that almost a fifth (17 percent) of respondents admitted to not having a disaster recovery plan in place, as they felt "it wasn’t necessary for their business".

But when questioned further about how they will be allocating their IT budget this year, over a third (35 percent) said they will be investing in data centre facilities and equipment.

Another 34 per cent said their budget priority was improving online booking capabilities, whilst 20 percent said they will be looking to extend their mobile facilities, due to an increase in mobile bookings.

Only 10 percent said they will be allocating budgets to combating the rise of online fraud.

Roger Keenan, managing director at City Lifeline, said: “It’s worrying to hear that such a large percentage of users and IT managers are not entirely confident that their disaster recovery plans would kick in, should their IT fail."

Keenan added, "Chances are, that most travel companies have well established and secure disaster recovery plans in place, but their CIOs have failed to communicate these plans to their users, who as a result are unclear as to how these would operate and what they should do during a disaster.”

The travel sector survey comes after a recent disaster recovery into the preparedness of public sector SME suppliers. That research found SME businesses supplying the public sector lacked confidence in their backup and disaster recovery strategies, with nearly a third (30 percent) stating they would face substantial risk of downtime in the event of a serious incident or disaster.

The survey questioned 380 SMEs across the UK and 12 other countries. It was conducted by the Ponemon Institute on behalf of data security firm Acronis, and revealed that over half (53 percent) of public sector firms are failing to make disaster recovery (DR) a sufficient priority.