TRAVEL AND MEETINGS CONVERGENCE - MYTH OR REALITY? PART 2

My colleague Katy Phelps wrote the prequel to this blog - Travel and Meetings Convergence, Myth or Reality? Part 1 – you can find it here. In her blog, she spoke about the convergence between the worlds of the corporate travel buyer and the corporate meetings buyer and how, on the whole, this crossover was a myth. And it’s true, the cross over is small, especially when it comes to trade shows, but crossover there is.

There are two areas where I believe it is most apparent. The first is at the strategic procurement level (ie where large multinational organisations are spending a lot of money and big savings are to be had). The second is the booking of spaces for regular small meetings (where only the tiniest of margins exist and minimum savings can be made).

Strategic procurement in the meetings industry – also known as strategic meetings management – is mostly the domain of large multinational organisations that have the buying power to procure meetings services in the way they procure business travel. These organisations often have procurement managers that deal with meetings and travel whereas in other, smaller companies, it’s not necessarily seen as a procurement function.    

These category specialists are responsible for agreeing the terms of contract with two or three suppliers in every category – from AV, production and creative, to venues, delegates and, of course, travel. They also look after their organisation’s large meetings. Their purpose is not to coordinate the creative elements of travel and meetings (which is best left to the event managers) but rather to consolidate the procurement of these functions and their suppliers. Do this well and considerable costs can be cut.

The other area where there is crossover between travel and meetings is in the procurement of high volumes of small meeting spaces by an organisation for, for example, sales meetings, training sessions, board meetings. In recent years, this function has increasingly become the responsibility of business travel managers who are able to draw on their experience and knowledge of consolidating large volumes of travel to transfer these procurement skills to the meetings category. Procurement managers are driving this consolidation of meetings spend because it gives them increased buying power, which leads to cost savings.

And so, in my opinion, the convergence between travel and meetings is very definitely a reality; it’s just that it’s a reality that is limited to certain job functions and it’s the business travel managers who are taking on meetings management but not vice versa. This is why at Centaur we have unique exhibitions for each industry and why, at TheMeetings Show UK, you’ll find no business travel content, but at the BusinessTravel Show you will find meetings management suppliers and educations sessions dedicated to meetings management and procurement in the conference programme.

David Chapple is event director of the Business Travel Show. Contact him on Twitter @btshowlondon or on 020 7970 4072.

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.

 

GUEST BLOG: ITM INTELLIGENCE 2012 JUST ONE WEEK AWAY

It’s exactly one week until the ITM’s ‘Intelligence2012’ conference takes place in Manchester and we’re really looking forward to it. Not only is it an excellent annual networking opportunity for the travel and meetings industry, it’s a valuable platform for learning about and debating the hot issues of the day, including APD, risk management, continuing airline consolidations and the Bribery Act.  

Moderated by BBC News anchorman Huw Edwards and attended by 350 senior professionals in the travel and meetings industry the ITM Conference to be held at the Palace Hotel in Manchester from 21^stto 23^rd May. It promises to be an unmissable event.

Educational streams include ‘In the Round’ with an ‘In the Hot seat’ session and a gadget review on new business innovations. ‘The Learning Lab’ with educational workshops offering practical advice and take away tools and the ‘Directors Roundtable’, for buyers only to debate challenging topics such as Industry Affairs, Managing Risk and the Bribery Act.

The opening plenary Breaking News, Sharing Views will see our expert panel put to the test on topics such as APD, access to content and data sharing plus the BA/bmi merger. Frank Dick, Olympic Coach will offer some inspirational advice on performance management. Travel’s sassiest women will interview industry guests in the Loose Women session and Steve Cram MBE will close the event with his stories of his competitive past and his experiences on being part of the winning bid for London2012 as the country gears up to the Olympics in July.

Find out more at www.itmconference.org, and if you're attending, please use our hashtag, it's #itmconference. 

Posted by Diane Steed, head of sales and marketing, ITM

HOSTED WITH THE MOSTED

Exhibition News ran a Food For Thought column in this month’s issue with three event organisers explaining why and how they run hosted programmes. As the Hosted Buyer Manager on the Business Travel Show it was particularly interesting for me to read and, I have to admit, hard to disagree with anything they said.

Hosted programmes are not the answer for every exhibition. But for the Business Travel Show, they work. Like the other commentators’ shows, we introduced our programme to guarantee the highest quality buyers in Europe attend our event each February and that they also attend a set number of appointments with our exhibitors over the two days. The result is exposure to more business opportunities for our exhibitors and a much, much higher ROI for them, which is increasingly important given the economic environment we are all operating in.

We believe so strongly that hosted buyer programmes are the way forward for the Business Travel Show that last year we invested heavily in bringing nearly 800 to our event from the likes of Nike, Sony, Jaguar Land Rover, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, 02, British Gas, Aviva and Bridgestone. For 2013, we are investing heavily again. In fact, work’s already started on refining the programme and working with our European partners to expand our database. I’m already looking forward to it.

Posted by Graham Angus - graham.angus@centaur.co.uk 

An eye to an eye: why face to face meetings will always have a place in business

I’m a social media convert. I confess. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn – you name it, I’m on it. Technology has done an amazing job in transforming the way we communicate; from the introduction of the 135-year-old telephone, to the fax machine, email, texting and, of course, social media. There’s no question technology makes our business lives easier, but is it helping us to do more business?

Well. The ‘simple’ answer is no. But let me try and explain why. There’s been loads of research into face to face versus e-communication over the years. Some companies claim that business meetings are a waste of time – ‘an inefficient use of resources with low ROI’ – and, as such, have switched to the likes of telepresencing and video conferencing, even to plain old email.

Indeed, during the recession, businesses were forced more than ever to consider these relatively low-cost business travel alternatives. And this is fine, for internal meetings, or for external meetings where an established business relationship and level of trust already exists.

But where e-communication isn’t so successful is where business introductions need to take place, deals signed, partnerships forged, parties persuaded, negotiations made and decisions agreed. And this is why e-communication will never replace the need for face to face meetings.  

Face to face meetings allow us to develop transparency and trust in ways that are not always possible with e-communications, and also much more quickly. They allow us to engage in and observe verbal and non-verbal behaviour and to spot and react to the nuances associated with hand gestures, the voice and facial expressions that simply cannot be captured in email. It allows you to understand intuitively the dynamics between group members. Face to face meetings also occur in ‘real time’ as opposed to non-synchronised time. They are not subject to delay or technological problems. And finally, they allow for human contact and they permit humour. We are social creatures, after all, and the importance of these last points cannot be underestimated.

All of this explains why the business travel market is on the up once more, despite an increase in use of travel alternatives during the recession. And also why trade shows like the Business Travel & Meetings Show are still an integral part of an organisation’s new business development and marketing strategies. The last two points in my previous paragraph reflect this particularly well, and perhaps also explain why visitors to the show consistently demand ‘good networking’!

At the end of the day, social media is fantastic at opening doors and at keeping long-term, healthy relationships trotting along. But if you want to do business, you need to be sociable as well as social, and that means face to face meetings where you can see the whites of each others’ eyes and share a firm handshake.

Posted by David Chapple, event director, Business Travel & Meetings Show 

The time is ripe for traditional travel buyers to learn from the meetings pros

The meetings market is not known as the final frontier in the travel industry for nothing and I’ve long held the belief that the time is ripe for travel and procurement buyers who now look after meetings to step up their game. 

Despite being viewed as the rebellious teenager for many years, meetings management is becoming more mainstream and a survey recently carried out by the show has confirmed that traditional travel and procurement buyers are beginning to understand the benefits of introducing meetings policy, strategy, evaluation and technology into their everyday processes.

The survey of 204 procurement, meetings and business travel managers revealed:

·         69% of meetings budgets have either remained static or declined in the last year

·         23% have increased, and only slightly

·         38% of companies are still without a meetings policy

·         80% of companies do not use technology to manage their meeting spend

·         65% are not involved in measuring meetings ROI

·         42% are using more travel alternatives, such as video conferencing, than they did a year ago

·         25% are managing more UK and short haul destination meetings

·         71% of those organising pre-meeting events, such as golf and spa days, are arranging fewer of them

On the flip side, this is also a great opportunity for suppliers who also need to step up the plate and realise there’s a whole new audience they should be doing business with.

Posted by David Chapple, event director, Business Travel & Meetings Show