The Conversation RUN DEEP STILL WATERS
A new face heads up the increasingly enlivened industry body for travel management companies, the GTMC. Gillian Upton met Ajaya Sodha to find out how his two-year tenure as Chair will shape this lobbying organisation as it faces one of its most challenging years
A SOFTLY spoken man held the floor at the Guild of Travel Management Companies AGM a few weeks ago at the Marriott on London's Portman Square. He extolled the virtues of his predecessor and went on to outline how he was going to continue the momentum of change and innovation. While Maurice Veronique, the GTMC chair
from 2008, made big waves by making fundamental changes to the Association, and his successor Portman’s Mike Hare in 2010 consolidated and put the association on a more secure financial footing, this new Chair will do equally well, but by stealth. Rather than Maurice’s tsunami or Mike’s storm, this will be the gentle wind of change following through. “It will be evolution, not revolution,” says the composed new Chair Ajaya Sodha. That he wrote his opening speech a month before, calmly over Christmas, says buckets about him. Not that Sodha is no less driven. He is a man
that gets things done, but by quiet collabora- tion, tenacity and steely determination. He takes the reins of a leaner and fitter association with the same key challenges still to get to grips with: lack of runway capacity in the southeast of the country, excessive taxes such as APD, increased bureaucracy for incoming travellers such as visas and the thorny issue of carbon emissions and the environment. “There are many challenges ahead but
hasn’t that always been the case?”, he asks with characteristic pragmatism. This AGM was already stamped with the Sodha style hallmark, with an appearance put in by Carolyn McCall, CEO of easyJet, to members, sharing her strategy of tweaking this low-cost carrier’s standard business model to woo the corporate traveller. Collaboration and communication with such high profile, strategic thinkers in the industry are to characterise Sodha’s time in charge. “It’s a people thing. Collaboration is my big thing, with members and other stakeholders. I want to add value to members and partners. I want to spark debate and controversy with high-level people who will not deliver a sales pitch,” he explains. Hoorah to that.
22 I THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
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