It has now been a few days ago since we took part in the ACTE Education Forum at the Park Hyatt Zürich on May 11th 2017. ACTE invited folks to an open discussion on digitization in the Travel Industry and its effect on Travel Management under the banner question “Are you digital?”. An exciting forum with a good mix of travel managers and Travel Industry suppliers and an event that involved more preparation time in advance than usual. Things don’t always turn out as expected….
ACTE, like other event organizers, has changed how these events are structured and kicked off with a “buyers only” segment. This seems to align with Travel Management expectations. In this segment subject matter can be discussed in a supplier agnostic environment. Or at least mostly. Last Tuesday Thomas Eggert, Senior Director Global and Strategic Corporate Accounts und Johannes Walter, Senior Director, of the Lufthansa Group were involved. After a keynote presentation on “The future or the airline industry – a Lufthansa Perspective“, Thomas Eggert was interviewed by Greeley Koch ACTE Executive Director.
Photo: ACTE
Afterwards, the participating Travel Managers began a group session, following up on the presented subject matter and openly discussed amongst themselves.
Networking Lunch & Afternoon Session
After the „Buyers only“ segment in the morning, many vendors then joined the distinguished group of participants for lunch. Alas, I didn’t have much time to spend on conversation with colleagues as I needed to be wired up for the moderation session and wrap up the agenda with Sabah Kahoul. As I said – things don’t always turn out as expected…
After having received a cancelation from one of the main discussion panelists for the digitization in Business Travel segment, two days before the event, we got another cancelation the same morning from a Hotel procurement panelist who had to bail out ill. We managed to find replacements at short notice so I didn’t have to entirely reallocate all questions.
After Sabah Kahoul greeted the new participants and gave a short introduction, Greeley Koch took over at the helm to give an Overview of today’s challenges and Global Corporate Travel trends and how ACTE plans to deal with them. One of the main points seems to be the return of a more traveler need centric focus in Travel Management efforts and in supporting technology.
Digitization – A Strategic Key to Business Travel?
TravelBrain’s moderated session began really well in a relaxed atmosphere and attention was focused on digitization And of course, I don’t just mean because I was at the helm.
The only way that we can serve our travelers is by turning them into data
Eric Bailey, Microsoft director of travel, venue sourcing and payment
Marilyn Markham, Director Business Architecture, CTO, American Express Global Business Travel presented „The next wave of digital transformation“ and in a very likeable and humorous way, explained what all is meant with digitization and Artifical Intelligence and what the potentials for our Industry could be. Not all of it is science fiction – some of it has already been implemented or is being tested in TMC or technology provider labs.
Photo: ACTE
Photo: ACTE
Photo: ACTE
The effects on travelers and their travel managers, vendors and topics such as Travel Risk Management were evaluated in depth during the panel discussion with Erinn Collier, Head of UK, Uber for Business, Jean-Claude Grosselin, Vice-President Technology, Egencia Business Travel, Stéphane Lormant, Head of Growth, FCm France & Switzerland and one of our short notice replacement panelists, Marina Hegemann, Co-Founder Tourist Mobile.
Unfortunately, we had to shorten the segment a little as the presentations of both Greeley Koch and Marilyn Markham were longer than expected. So we were not able to truly treat all queries that I had collated in advance. But, nonetheless, it was exciting to be on stage with the partners from American Express GBT, Egencia, FCM, Uber and Tourist Mobile.
Hotel Programme: To Source or Not to Source? That is the Question!
We sped into the next topic by introducing the next segment: Hotel Sourcing. Of course, our goal was to check out the effects digitization has in this area. Have the underlying processes changed in the last couple of years? Do companies still require a hotel sourcing strategy or are regular rates from the likes of HRS, booking.com and the metasearchers completely sufficient?
In a super interesting presentation, Carole Poillerat, Executive Director, Industry Relations & Corporate Travel Forum at HRS delved into each point and demonstrated where the challenges are, which criteria need to be taken into consideration regarding the evaluation of a hotel rate and where a procurement strategy for hotels absolutely makes sense.
Photo: ACTE
A current ACTE project that deals with an ACTE hotel certification for specialty and boutique hotels which are not accessible via regular means, was presented by Winfried Barczaitis, Chief Operating Officer, ACTE-BCHA. The envisaged Business Travel certification should serve as a quality indication for procurement and travel managers, so that smaller hotels can also be accommodated in company hotel programs without internal quality assurance and assessment activities.
The two presenters were joined by Malte Budde, Sales & Marketing Director, Park Hyatt Hotel Zurich und Ptisem Djeghbal, Travel Manager, Japan Tobacco International for the following panel discussion. As a replacement for Julie Bellomo , who had been taken ill, Philipp Brunner, Global Category Leader Indirect Procurement at Unilever made himself available at short notice. All panelists were of the opinion that hotel procurement is still a pivotal piece of the overall puzzle. However, in today’s world a combination of corporate rates in preferred hotels, discount deals with hotel chains, dynamic pricing and the inclusion of daily rack rates is essential. Food for thought from our Hyatt colleagues: nowadays most requests and RFPs are transmitted electronically. The personal touch has all but disappeared except in scenarios where problems occur. Unfortunately, again, time was a little short for this more in-depth discussion on this topic, so I had to close the segment after just a few interesting questions and hand over to Sabah for some closing words and goodbyes.
Drinks & travelBrain conclusions
It was networking at the bar whilst having a couple of drinks that some of the topics could be delved into a little deeper. And some of the participants could get some more answers to questions they still had.
A successful event with topics that are important to today’s industry. There are hardly any events, industry specific journals or newsletters that do not pick up digitization. Since hotel sourcing still seems to be a hot agenda item, it goes to show how important this subject still is to travel managers. The panelists and participants in the discussion were
excellent and wowed with interesting statements. Feedback from all participants was fantastic. Can’t say much about the moderation – I did that myself….so I am eagerly waiting for the questionnaires to come flooding in.
Both my colleague Marco Zweifel and I had fun and we followed up with many interesting conversations. We’ll be back!
Adrian Matt for travelBrain
The presentations of the ACTE Education Forum Zurich are available by clicking on the following links:
- Global Corporate Travel Trends – by Greeley Koch
- The Future of Airline Industry, a Lufthansa Perspective – by Thomas Eggert und Johannes Walter
- Digitization – A Strategic Key to BusinessTravel? – by Marilyn Markham
- FINAL – 2017_ACTE_template-ZUR_BCHA – by Winfried Barczaitis
More pictures of the occasion can be found on the ACTE Facebook page.
