TRAVEL AND MEETINGS CONVERGENCE - MYTH OR REALITY – PART 1

In recent years, the convergence between meetings and travel has been somewhat of a hot topic with reports that an increasing proportion of business travel buyers are now responsible for meetings spend and vice versa. On paper, it makes perfect sense. In reality, it’s not so clean cut. This blog looks at the myth. Check back for Part 2, when my colleague David Chapple will discuss the reality.

In my role as sales director for the Business Travel Show, I’ve seen firsthand that there is some crossover between the worlds of corporate travel and corporate meetings but on the whole they are very different. In fact, if this blog were a Venn diagram, that little area in between the two circles you’d be looking at would be very little indeed.

A quick look at their job titles reveal just how different corporate meetings and travel buyers are. In the meetings world, buyers are corporate, event and association planners, and professional conference organisers and agencies. In the travel world, buyers are corporate travel managers, travel procurement and category managers, TMCs and HBAs.

They also have very different responsibilities. When corporate meetings buyers book travel, it’s incentive and group travel. Their focus is often on planning amazing trips to amazing places for thousands of people.  When a business travel buyer or TMC books travel, it’s still for thousands of travellers, but these are business travellers flying between major cities and often travelling alone.

And when it comes to supplier needs, the lack of crossover is apparent once more. Corporate meetings buyers want to talk to venues, cities, destinations and destination management companies. Corporate travel buyers want to speak to TMCs, airlines, hotels, ground transportation and travel technology software providers.

This divergence between buyers in the two sectors also explains why there is often very little crossover between visitors and exhibitors at exhibitions and conferences and why, knowing what we now know about the two markets, Centaur decided to launch The Meetings Show UK next July. We already run the Business Travel Show each February, which focuses predominantly – but not entirely exclusively – on corporate travel (more to come on that in David’s blog).

By organising separate shows for the two sectors our aim is to offer buyers and suppliers a more focused experience. Visiting and exhibiting at events are huge commitments in terms of time and resources and providing suppliers, knowledge streams and networking opportunities that are totally relevant means they can get more out of the shows and a much higher return on their investment

Katy Phelps is sales director of the Business Travel Show. Contact her at katy.phelps@centaur.co.uk or on +44 (0)20 7970 4075.

 

TRAVEL BUYERS HAVE TO BE TRAINED NEGOTIATORS TOO

I was at an ITM meeting last week and one of the topics that came up was air fares or, more specifically, how buyers can and need to negotiate their way around them. We discussed how, before business travel buyers even attempt to start negotiations with airlines, they have to dig deeper to find out what makes up that fare. Some airlines, for instance, include ancillary fees and fuel surcharges in the fare. Others don’t.

Travel managers have to know what the ancillary fees are (seat allocation, baggage allowance, and so on) so they can unravel the real cost of the ticket. Only then, are they in a position to start negotiating with the airlines. And negotiate they must given that, at around half of the total travel budget, air represents the largest spending category in nearly all travel programmes.

CWT – the UK’s largest travel management company – understands this and agrees. This week, the company announced its new report, Mastering the Maze: a Practical Guide to Air and Ground Savings, which takes travel managers on a tour of savings opportunities in 20 different areas, including negotiating fuel surcharges and ancillary fees. Well worth downloading.

Being transparent when it comes to real cost and added costs is a win win situation between buyers and suppliers – it encourages loyalty among buyers and, by staying loyal, buyers will be better placed to achieve a volume discount. What’s not to like?

Posted by David Chapple, event director of the Business Travel Show. You can get in touch at david@businesstravelshow.com or on Twitter @btshowlondon

THE APPY TRAVELLER

When it comes to travelling on business, time is money and stress equals reduced productivity, so anything that can save time and reduce stress must be a good thing, right? This is why I’ve decided to share my top ten business travel apps:

1              TripIt (iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows)
A serious app for the organized traveller; TripIt keeps track of all your confirmation emails for the trip and creates an itinerary for you to follow. You can even book restaurant reservations or reserve tickets for a show through this app.


2              GateGuru (iOS, Android)Invaluable when it comes to long airport layovers, GateGuru provides maps of terminals, security line wait times and tracking for your flight.

3              Yelp (iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows)

Yelp's free app searches for locations like restaurants, bars and coffee shops around you, then provides details like hours, price and user ratings to help you make the best decision on where to travel next.

4              WiFi Finder (iOS, Android)

Wi-Fi Finder is a free app that helps travellers find over 320,000 registered public Wi-Fi hotspots. What’s not to like?

5              FlightTrack (iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows)

Easy to use app for info about specific flights from more than 5,000 airports and 1,400 airlines. It includes maps, flight statistics and more. Also integrates with your itineraries on TripIt.

6              Turboscan (iOS)

A free document scanner app that saves images as PDF or JPG image files, which you can then e-mail or send to a cloud storage service such as DropBox.

7              DroidScanLite (Android)

Similar to Turboscan for Android handsets.

8              Expensify (most)

Easy to use – either enter details yourself, take shots of receipts or use the app’s auto-scanning tool. Swiftly creates slick expense reports.

9              Worldcard Mobile (iOS, Windows)

Take photos of business cards as you collect them and this app translates them to digital files. Easy as that.

10           Time Master+ Billing (iOS)

This app keeps tabs on how long you spend on different projects or clients and produces detailed reports , which can  be back up on Dropbox to synchronised with other devices to create professional-looking invoices.

David Chapple is event director of the Business Travel Show – talk to him on Twitter @btshowlondon.

HOW DID WE FORGET ABOUT GATWICK?

There has been pretty much one topic on everyone’s lips in the industry this week and that is the argument for a third runway at Heathrow Airport. Why? Because the UK government is due to unveil a consultation document on its new airports strategy in the next few weeks. Note: the consultation document isn’t about Heathrow and its third runway. In fact, expansion at Heathrow isn’t even included as one of the options on the table. And yet, it would appear, all roads (or should that be runways) keep leading back to Heathrow.

There’s no doubting that Heathrow is a problem that needs fixing. It’s currently operating at a perilous 99 per cent capacity. Some have suggested introducing mixed mode flying (ie using its two runways for inbound and outbound flights) to increase this capacity by 15 per cent and another 10 million passengers per year.

But, in my opinion, Heathrow is a bit of red herring in this whole debate. We need to stop talking about it and get back to the real issue: how is aviation going to grow over the next 20, 30 years and how are we going to build an infrastructure fit for purpose to continue supporting the growth of UK Plc?

In the short term, the answer is not Heathrow. Or Marsden. Or Boris Island. Let’s open our eyes and look to other airports in the South East, airports with capacity: Luton, Stansted, Gatwick.

Gatwick, for one, is currently operating at around 80 per cent capacity on its single runway. It’s projected to grow to 40 million passengers by 2020 with that one runway (it’s currently at just under 34 million). It’s connected to London for business better than any other airport, with train links to Victoria, London Bridge, City Link and Kings Cross. And it’s currently investing around £20 million per month into new passenger facilities as part of a six year £1.2 billion programme due for completion around 2014/2015. This investment and infrastructure make Gatwick a great option for business travellers.

But I’m not here to champion Gatwick over Heathrow, or Stansted over Boris Island. I’m here to champion common sense and to say let’s park Heathrow for now and start thinking long term for the good of this industry. 

Posted by David Chapple - talk to him on Twitter @btshowlondon or david@businesstravelshow.com 

LONDON'S CALLING

As the Olympics heaves into sight we’re beginning to see how the main sponsors have chosen to connect their brand to the Olympic theme.

As a Tier-One sponsor, BA’s campaign, which landed on the 19^th June, is a perfectly executed piece of work from BBH with the cheeky line of ‘Don’t Fly,’ extolling the nation to stay home and cheer on Team GB.

I’ve seen some negative comments about the advert, suggesting that it’s crazy for the airline to encourage potential customers to stay away, but surely that’s missing the point of this creative idea. Beyond the TV advert a social campaign enables viewers to enter their postcode and then see their street go past through the cabin window. It’s clever, relevant and all to the soundtrack of The Clash’s iconic track, London’s Calling, genuine feel-good advert that captures both the spirit of the Olympics and the fun of travel.

Over the next few weeks I’m sure there’s going to be plenty to tut about with regards to the Olympics, but campaigns like this remind us that this is, in part, a celebration of this great city and that despite its faults, something we should all be proud of.


David Chapple is event director of the Business Travel Show - he’d love to hear what you think about this topic - contact him on Twitter @btshowlondon

THERE'S HOSTED, AND THEN THERE'S HOSTED

I was interested in the opinions recently expressed in the June edition of C&IT in the Big Debate article: Can trade shows deliver ROI in the current climate? The majority of views, albeit for different reasons, were in favour of trade shows, but the real argument centred on the difference between shows that offer a hosted programme and those that don’t.

It’s just a simple fact that a trade show that initiates and maintains a creative and ambitious hosted programme will always deliver more ROI for both visitors and exhibitors than those that don’t. The question I’d add to the debate however is what is a genuine hosted programme?

We've learnt at the Business Travel Show that you can only really drive ROI for visitors if the hosted programme is a year round commitment with a highly focused business networking and education programme. There also needs to be meaningful ways for both groups to interact and meet over the two days of the show. Having a deeper understanding of the market helps too, BTS 2013 will be our 19th year, enabling us to quickly identify the trends and unique requirements of this complex market.

So embrace successful events, they genuinely do offer a strong return,  but in these challenging times it’s not unreasonable to look harder at the criteria that you use to determine what is and isn't a successful event.

David Chapple is event director of the Business Travel Show - he’d love to hear what you think about this topic - contact him on Twitter @btshowlondon

IS UK PLC TRAVELLING ITS WAY OUT OF RECESSION?

I read good news yesterday. Very good news. The UK appears to be travelling its way out of the double dip recession.

I've always believed that when the going gets tough, businesses should not cut back, but continue to invest in business development to shore up their futures. And, in my opinion, there's no better way to secure new business and maintain strong relationships with existing clients than through face to face meetings. 

According to ABTN, a study carried out by GBTA predicts a 0.7% rise in business travel spending by UK-based businesses this year compared to declines within the rest of Europe. But what's really interesting is where they are travelling from and to.

Delve into the monthly BAA Traffic and Business Commentary for May and you'll see that traffic through Heathrow was down 0.6% last month, while traffic through Glasgow rose by 10%, Aberdeen 16% and Edinburgh 2.2. Why? Well the ‘from’ could very well be linked to my blog on Monday about business travellers using regional airports to connect to long haul flights at European hubs outside of the UK to avoid paying APD.

And if you look at the ‘to’, you’ll find that flights to the North Atlantic rose by 1.6% yet flights to Europe dropped 9%, which implies that we may be avoiding the Eurozone during its ongoing crisis, but we are still flying to see our friends in North America in the hope of doing business with companies and countries that we already know and feel safe with. 

David Chapple is event director of the Business Travel Show - he’d love to hear what you think about this topic - contact him on Twitter @btshowlondon