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CAREERS & TRAINING


Steps to success Following a career path in travel can be a challenge in a


complex and shifting environment – luckily, help is at hand By BOB PAPWORTH


S That was then. Over a quarter of a century


peaking to The Independent newspaper in September 1990, on the eve of his first match as England’s captain, goal-hanging crisp-monger Gary Lineker


pronounced: “The nice aspect about football is that, if things go wrong, it’s the manager who gets the blame.” It was a sentiment that would have


resonated with the corporate travel com- munity of the day. Travel managers had traditionally played piggy-in-the-middle, stuck between the rock of a cost-obsessed board and the hard place of the terminally- rebellious end-users they endeavoured to serve.


BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM


later, there has been a seismic shift in the nature of the travel management role. In many cases, the very word ‘management’ is no longer appropriate or applicable. As a senior travel buyer said to me recently: “I’m not a travel manager any more. I don’t manage travel – I have a TMC [travel man- agement company] to do that for me. Mine is a much more strategic role.”


WHERE THE BUCK STOPS In part, that is a result of the sales-pitch successes of the TMCs themselves; they have convinced corporates that responsibil- ity for business travel is no longer a buck that can be passed to the chairman’s PA or


some hapless individual in the accounts department. Business travel costs lots of money, and lots of money requires lots of management. More significantly, it reflects a growing recognition within companies and organ- isations that ‘travel’ is a means to an end, a way to win more business, either from existing or new clients, and thus to bolster the bottom line. Anyone can book a ticket, but analysis of


how, when, to where, and why – that’s an entirely different matter. The changed and changing nature of


the job has inevitably led to a changed and changing nature of the job market. Germany-based Yvonne Moya is global


BBT January/February 2017 121


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