Paris and Amsterdam. Barcelona comes fourth, despite Spain being expected to see the most dramatic fall (over 10 per cent) in European MICE spend.
SOCIAL MEDIA Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) consultant Rana Walker told EIBTM delegates that many in generation X and Y already considered emails passe, in a session advising on ways businesses can harness social media tools to communicate both internally and externally. Walker said: “Social media is ‘word of mouth’ on steroids – what brands lose in control they gain in transparency.” She said despite fears of negative feedback on products and services, it was better to engage on a brand’s platforms where businesses can respond quickly and directly. Walker cited Sapient global travel buyer Michelle de Costa’s
effective use of social media tool Yammer to engage and inform business travellers, mixing driving policy compliance with sharing personal recommendations and peers’ travel tips. However, while Yammer operates behind a company’s firewall, Walker said a concern for businesses and travel buyers was employees inadvertently leaking sensitive company information on social networks: businesses need to develop and effectively communicate a set of guidelines to help employees protect information, she said. Two examples of pioneering
social media marketing included an Ibiza hotel providing guests with radio- frequency identification (RFID) bracelets and encouraging them to swipe onsite camera booths at its pool parties to post instant Facebook updates; and IKEA’s Facebook campaign in 2009, which showed photos
GTMC LONDON CONFERENCE
Rob Gill and Stanley Slaughter report
PROPOSALS FROM THE independent commission on increasing airport capacity in the south-east must be “sensible” if they are to be adopted by the government, Minister of State for Transport Simon Burns told GTMC delegates in London. “We hope to build consensus with the other political parties as we did successfully with High Speed 2,” he said. “We are thinking ahead on the future of aviation and we want airports that are globally competitive and connect to places all over the world. We want to find the solution not just for the next four, five or six years, but the next four, five and six decades.” The commission, chaired by former CBI boss Sir Howard Davies, has been set up by the government to look at how to increase capacity at the airports in the south-east and maintain
the UK’s status as a global aviation hub. But the commission is not due to report its full findings until after the next general election in 2015, although there will be an interim report by the end of 2013 to look at short-term capacity fixes.
TOUGH NEGOTIATIONS Experts told the conference that the days when travel buyers held the upper hand over hotel groups look, for the time being at least, to be over, with negotiations at their toughest since pre-recession days. Wyndham Hotel Group sales vice-president Ross Hosking said what has strengthened the hotels’ hand is that supply of rooms is “tapering off” and business in gateway cities is booming, giving hotels not only strong bargaining rights over rates, but also the ability to trade
Simon Burns
these off against rates in their hotels in less popular places. Margaret Bowler, HRG’s director of global hotels relations, said: “The corporates are obviously looking for flat rates or minimal increases but the hotels are looking for increases. It depends on the location as to whether you see it as a buyer’s or seller’s market. Some locations are doing incredibly well but others are not where the hotels would like them to be. “Occupancy is picking up and from the hotel point of view, rates are going in the right direction but they are not jumping up. From the corporate point of view, their challenge is cost control. They are all being tasked with making savings.”
Wyndham's Hosking said hotels were looking for rate rises of between 7-9 per cent while the buyers were seeking zero increases where possible but likely to accept rises up of to about 5 per cent. With negotiations on a knife edge, Bowler made the point that it was now even more critical for buyers to deliver on their promises of volume. Bowler and Hosking both said the tightness of the negotiations was forcing travel managers to take a tougher line on compliance. “95 per cent are making travel policy more stringent or keeping it the same. They see it as a golden opportunity for managed business travel,” said Hosking. ■
of furniture displays on its manager’s Facebook page – the first FB user to tag their name to an item in the pictures won it. This spread rapidly and generated a great deal of interest and promotion for the brand. “The way for your social media content to go viral is to provoke emotion,” said Walker. IKEA featured in another
ACTE panel session, discussing the ‘marriage’ of travel and MICE. Lotten Tegstam Welinder, travel and meetings manager at the furniture giant, told delegates how an integrated campaign to promote web meetings within the company saw massive adoption with a resulting €25 million reduction in annual meetings spend from 2009 to 2011.
MUMBAI MOVE EIBTM exhibition director Graeme Barnett announced the launch of a new IBTM show for India, with the first
one scheduled for September 12-14 this year in Mumbai. He said India currently has a fragmented MICE market with enormous potential, and he expected the event to grow significantly over coming years. Barnett also signed a deal to continue holding the EIBTM show in Barcelona’s Fira Gran Via until 2016, and said this year’s hosted buyer programme boasted a world record of 4,200 buyers. He added that the inclusion for the first time this year of the Business Travel pavilion and ACTE education sessions, together with Reed Exhibitions buying the Business Travel Market and incorporating it into the World Travel Market (WTM), showed a strategy of sharpening focus on the business travel sector. He said this reflected the trend for increasing harmonisation of travel and meetings. ■ ■ See Barcelona destination feature, p96.