Event report THE BUSINESS TRAVEL CONFERENCE 2014
BIG IDEAS
Now in its eighth year, The Business Travel Conference took place in June, adopting the theme of Sharing Solutions in Business Travel. Gillian Upton & Andy Hoskins report
Restless curiosity was the theme of TBTC14's keynote that opened the two-day event, offering a cautionary tale of how to avoid the complacency of success, to question the status quo, to be wary of cognitive bias and appositely, how to adapt to survive in new environments. John Simonett’s opening remarks set the
tone for the conference, which flagged up the changes and challenges facing buyers and suppliers in the mid and long-term. Mitigating risk for travellers drilled down
to the detail that is required in policy to avoid unnecessary accidents and a potential 20 per cent fine of company turnover if an employer is deemed to have been culpable under the Corporate Manslaughter & Homicide Act. Both Martin Purvis of ATPI Group and buyer Steve Proud of Citi shared best practice, highlighting the need for a joined-up policy and mandating the use of a TMC for bookings. In Citi’s case, non-compliant travellers do not get their expenses reimbursed. Two technology experts, Julian Mills,
Regional Director of Traveldoo and Andy Owen-Jones, CEO of bd4travel, glimpsed into future technologies that will impact on business travel. In The Shape of Things to Come workshop, Mills forecast more partner ‘divorces’ as buyers shed their reluctance to change solutions from third party providers, while Owen-Jones advised buyers to distill data rather than focus only on deals and bookings. See page 25 for a full report on the session.
The viability of converging transient
travel and events spend was tackled in a Meetings Management workshop where two buyers – Veronique Algeot of Astra Zeneca and Paul Wakelin, formerly of IBM – shared their journey. Algeot admitted that using ExCel
spreadsheets for the last four years for 38 markets was labour-intensive although data was rich, with 52 dashboards per market per quarter. A move to a tech- nology solution is being forced on all pharmaceutical companies by new reporting legislation in 2016. Wakelin utilised StarCite as an RFP tool
to drive consistency for vendors and suppliers, rolling out in the US first because of its single currency, and then globally, flagging up the language and cultural challenges across Europe. “The only way to get buy-in is to communicate the benefits and get internal stakeholders to legitimise your arguments,” said Wakelin.
buy-in is to communicate the benefits and get internal stakeholders to legitimise your arguments
“ The only way to get ” In a session titled Staying Power, Jo
Stevenson of Accor, buyer Sam van Leeuwen of PwC and Mark Douglas of HRS tackled the complex world of accommodation pro- grammes. Stevenson advised buyers to “engage with the general managers of your key hotels”, while van Leeuwen said buyers need to be realistic when they're chasing corporate rates. “You won't get deals if you don't have the volumes,” she said, later adding that if a stay is for three nights or more “you must look at serviced apartments. We were early adopters of them.” The Ground Zero workshop highlighted
the technological breakthroughs in the ground transportation spend category, in
14 THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
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