NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2010
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013
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Conferences
Business eye EIBTM 2012
New for the EIBTM trade show in Barcelona was a business-travel pavilion and education sessions run by ACTE. Paul Revel reports
MEETINGS, INCENTIVES, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) budgets will be put under more pressure in 2013, with buyers expected to maintain activities with less money, according to research by American Express unveiled at EIBTM. Issa Jouaneh, vice- president and general manager of Amex’s meetings and events division, told delegates the global picture of MICE activities outpacing spend meant there was increasing demand for managed meetings policies and programmes to be as sophisticated as those of
transient travel. “This will be a continuing trend in 2013,” he said. Jouaneh added there was a “healthy tension” between hotels’ planned
rate rises in 2013 and buyers’ expectations that rates will stay the same, and that the pressure would continue to drive short lead times.
The forecast, based on Amex data combined with polling of buyers and suppliers around the world, showed strongest growth in the Asia-Pacific region, with the number of meetings expected to rise 6.4 per cent. But Amex vice-president of meetings and events Michael Schuller compared this to only a 4.2 per cent predicted increase in spend, which he said pointed to an “increasing cost- consciousness” in a traditionally high-spending region. The added factor of a predicted 4 per cent increase in hotel group rates would drive greater interest in strategic meetings management in Asia-Pacific, he said. Europe is forecast to see the
biggest decline, with a 2.3 per cent drop in the number of meetings tied to a 6 per cent fall in spend, implying big budgetary pressures for European MICE planners in 2013. London remains Europe’s top MICE destination for 2013, followed by
ACTE LONDON FORUM: THE VALUE OF TRAVEL MANAGEMENT
A NEW DATA-LED ROLE for travel managers could see them double their current pay levels in just two years, according to The Data Exchange managing director Susan Hopley, writes Paul Revel.
She was speaking to delegates
at an ACTE forum in London that explored ways buyers can define, enhance and communicate the value to business of a managed travel programme. Hopley said the evolving
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role of a “travel director” encompasses implementing and managing new traveller mobile technologies and demonstrating relative return on investment on comparative booking platforms. The role will involve managing
costs as part of sales budgets and overall corporate profitability. The travel directors of 2014 will be “data scientists” skilled in analytics, advanced reporting graphics and leveraging the value of corporate-held data. She cited reports by the McKinsey Global Institute which showed
the expanded role and new skill-sets meant travel buyers will command double current average salaries. “We are on the cusp of change,” said Hopley. She also pointed out that data graphics have not changed since William Playfair pioneered the bar, line and pie charts in the 18th century. Urging delegates to adopt new reporting methodology, she said: “With all the information available to us, we can’t survive on Will Playfair graphs.” Hopley quoted Microsoft
research boss Craig Mundie, saying “data is becoming the new raw material of business”, and she said travel managers should drive initiatives to make revenue from their data. She shared more McKinsey research, which showed data as having a US$1 trillion global annual value, with more than US$40 billion of that within the travel industry. New ways of utilising data as a commodity meant de-identified data could be pooled, with new
revenue available to those corporations selling it.
Summing up the ongoing and imminent changes to the travel management model, she quoted Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Deborah Short, global travel manager at insurance giant Willis, hosted a session on communication with Astra Zeneca global programme manager Kerrie Henshaw-Cox. Short said travel managers need to utilise all their company resources, such as the marketing, digital communications and IT departments, as well as external resources, including travel management companies and suppliers. She recommended developing a “holistic” yearly communications plan that takes account of geographic reach, stakeholder mix and optimised timings of messages. She gave an example of an internal campaign to increase
online adoption, which divided stakeholders into five groups, from chief officer level to travellers. The four-week campaign used various media, including training sessions, videoconferencing, intranet and e-newsletters, and achieved ambitious targets around the world, including a UK online adoption increase from 21 per cent to 70 per cent in two weeks. Henshaw-Cox told delegates about Astra Zeneca’s communication strategy for launching its global travel policy during 2012, replacing more than 60 regional policies. The campaign applied a
know, feel, do motivational method to prepare different stakeholder groups – including the senior executive team, agencies and 25,000 travellers – for the launch, and analysed the best channels to reach each group, including the firm’s global intranet and internal social media network Yammer. ■
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