Corporate Travel Manager

Just returned from ACTE Asia in Singapore, where over 400 business and meetings professionals came to learn and network. What a great conference!

The panel session that I moderated focused on the convergence of transient and meetings spend management and what kind of challenges (and rewards) that means for businesses in the Asia-Pacific region. It was a great success, largely due, I'd say, to the two featured practitioners: Meredith Smith, Travel Manager, APJ for Merck and Aileen London, Senior Manager for Global Meetings Services, APAC, for Oracle.  Both of these women are accomplished professionals, and they freely shared their experiences and knowledge about their respective programs with an audience eager to learn more about how transient and meetings management is approached by both of these companies.

Congratulations go out to Aileen London who won the prestigious 2010 President’s Award from ACTE for her work in developing collaboration and internal support for her program consolidation and cost containment and risk mitigation strategies.  Given how challenging it is to streamline, consolidate and innovate in the Asia-Pacific region, her accomplishments are remarkable and her recognition is well deserved.  To top it off, she is so wonderfully down-to-earth and always such a pleasure to deal with.

I must comment, too, about the gargantuan deluxe host hotel for the conference -- which is now the famous Marina Bay Sands Hotel.  I don't know about you, but my usual experience with large, new convention-type hotels is not very positive. But, in all honesty, given the size of the hotel (more than 2,500 rooms in three separate towers, an adjacent world-class convention and conference center, and the first-ever casino opened in Singapore), the service was terrific.  Although the hotel is massive and impressive, you could still manage to get around relatively quickly. The hotel is part of the Sands Hotel group, and is grander than the deluxe properties you see in Vegas.  My one regret is that I didn’t have time to really explore the hotel property and grounds, but I did get to attend a private reception on the top floor (57 stories high) and walk around the “cruise ship” configured roof top, where the infinity pool seems to drop off the edge of the roof (yikes) and the sights, sounds and smells of Singapore are all around you. Simply beautiful! Someone told me that, in southern Indonesia, on a clear day, you can see the Marina Bay Sands Hotel and I believe it.

I also want to give a shout-out of appreciation to Qantas Airways and express a special thanks to Vice President, North America Sales, Cathie Sych.  Here’s how I would describe Qantas – excellent world-class service.  That’s what I experienced on the ground and in the air from Melbourne to Singapore.  My only regret is that the flight wasn’t longer in order for me to get the comfy in-flight pajamas that are handed out for long-haul flights. Oh well, I have no doubt there'll be a next time - given my crazy travel schedule!
 
In the meantime, I'm looking forward to the ACTE Berlin Global Education Conference from October 3-5, where I will be in a session (T204, Tuesday, Oct. 5th, from 2:45 to 3:45 pm) talking about risk mitigation in SMM. If you're going, please come to this session, as I'll be identifying the critical steps companies should employ to reduce their vulnerability to potential risks, and I'll be touching on:

    * Policy and communication
    * Sourcing and contracting
    * Tools & technologies
    * Managed payment processes
    * Crisis management planning

Hope to see you there!

You've got to be happy that demand is rising once again for corporate and meetings travel, but the effect of higher demand, of course, is higher prices. That's exactly what's going to happen next year, and this is a good time to prepare for it.

This week, Carlson Wagonlit Travel released its annual forecast, and in its look ahead for 2011 sees a rise in per-attendee, per-day cost for corporate meetings between 7% and 11%. Of course, I didn't know how much, but I knew the hike in meeting costs was coming. 

According to CWT, higher meeting costs will come from:

- a 3% to 5% hike in domestic economy airfares and a 2% to 7% rise in international economy and business class tickets,
- a 6.4% to 7.4% rise in U.S. average daily rates (and as high as 12%
in the Northeast).

If you're a meetings, travel or procurement manager, now is the time to review budgets and make sure that you're covered for these expected hikes in costs. If you find the numbers are falling short, take action! One way might be to gather data, such as CWT's forecast numbers (American Express usually comes out with a forecast around this time of the year, too, and I'll keep you posted on that one!), and present them to your VP or boss as proof that you need an injection of funds.

But if there's no budging on your budget, use your e-rfp tool to easily expand the hunt for more moderately priced hotels, such as airport or lower-star properties. And, when dealing with suppliers, don't forget about the negotiating ability you already yield.

You’ve got the power; use it!

We've just wrapped the NBTA Australia/New Zealand annual conference.  The speakers and sessions were outstanding! I want to express a special note of appreciation to NBTA Australia/NZ President Monica Gardner, as well as Boardmember Chris Telfer and Manager Elizabeth Montgomery, who so graciously invited me to come "Down Under" and be a featured presenter on "SMMP: The Final Frontier of Managed Travel." The accommodation arrangements and hospitality they extended to me is so typically and graciously Australian. It's always a pleasure to visit with friends and colleagues there.

I was reminiscing with Chris Telfer, whose real job is Senior Contract Manager of Travel for the Australian Federal Police, about how many NBTA Australia/NZ conferences I have attended and/or presented at, and we ball-parked that number to be around five or six. Considering that this year was their 15th annual conference, I’ve been to more than one third of them, and I hope I get asked back for many years to come. 

The sessions on this year's agenda were excellent and provided a range of information -- from local Australia-centric topics to global and regional business travel information.  I also want to extend a special "thank you" to Mike McCormick, Executive Director and COO of NBTA (to be known as GBTA in 2011), who, as the sole representative from the North American association, was kept busy during the conference with numerous press meetings, panels and presentations. Mike mentioned SMM several times and always acknowledged StarCite.  He is, indeed, a special friend to us here at StarCite, and he's doing a fantastic job for NBTA globally, I might add!

Particularly insightful was a local, public commentator, Michael Pascoe, who is on Aussie TV. He's usually the go-to expert on finance and economics for Australia. Michael was bullish on the local economy, then provided data to show why. It seems that the global financial crisis really bypassed Australia, so he was puzzled by why the local politicians and media keep harping on doom and gloom for Australia when the data shows GDP growth and no real ramifications. His findings were so compelling, I half joked with the audience when it
was my turn to speak, that I’m seriously considering moving to Australia and transferring all my assets Down Under!

My session on SMM went over well -- judging from all the nodding heads I saw in the auditorium.  I predict that this time next year, more Australian companies and TMCs will be reviewing, implementing or formulating their own SMMPs based on the knowledge that it’s really the last area of managed travel that can be tapped into for cost savings, but more importantly for risk mitigation and duty of care.  

Years ago, when I addressed the audience at what was then the ABTA (Australian Business Travel Association), I made a similar prediction about self booking tools. Then, a year later, when I returned, more than half the audience indicated they were looking at, researching or implementing self-booking tools.  I’m making the same prediction for SMMP, so we’ll check back next year and see if I’m right.

At an awards dinner, I had the privilege of sitting with NBTA executives and volunteer leaders, as well as this year’s winner of the 2010 Excellence Award for best-in-class travel management program achievement.  The applicants have to submit their business case and a panel of judges selects the one travel program that made significant improvement or achieved best-in-class status.  This year’s winner was Andrew McGregor of the Queensland Government, whose team basically re-created their travel program, changed suppliers and processes, and re-engineered their business travel policy, processes, and solutions from "end to end." Considering the amount of change management he and his team had to anticipate, endure and work through, the end result is not only modernization and automation, but it will also save the Queensland government millions of dollars. As a reward, a representative from their team will attend next year’s NBTA annual conference in Denver, Colorado, with all expenses paid.  Congratulations to Andrew and his team; well done!

On the last day of the conference, Mike McCormick and Monica Gardner announced the plans for the NBTA name change (to GBTA) and the sight of next year’s regional conference: (drum roll) Sydney!  Thank you to everyone for asking me to be part of the conference agenda this year.  

Enjoy the photo...just a snapshot from my room on a lovely Winter Melbourne day.

After a lengthy slump, Americans are meeting overseas once again, according to a new survey by the U.S. Office of Travel and Tourism Industries. That's great news for our global meetings industry, for suppliers, of course, but also for corporate and association buyers looking for international destinations that offer value and cultural richness. The rising numbers also confirm for me that we're finally shaking off the negative public stigma around meetings travel during the worst of the recession. 

So here are the numbers. Survey says: More than 6.4 million U.S. business travelers in 2009 spent about $25 billion on trips outside North America (13% were for meetings). While that number is about 1 million shy from 2008. The better news is that during the first four months of this year, international business travel was up by 1.5% over the same period a year ago.   

Top spots for U.S. visitors last year were Asia (I'm one of those long-haul travelers to the Far East  -- several times over!) to premier destinations like Japan. And China, which just became the world's second-largest economy, surpassing Japan, received nearly half a million business travelers. Wonder how long it will take for China to become the top spot for US business travelers, too? Europe also was a top destination for American business and meetings travelers (more than one-third of us who travel overseas go there every year), and there was a 16% rise in business travel visits to the Middle East last year.

What I found interesting about the report were statistics profiling your average ocean-hopping business and meetings traveler. Here's one little ditty: 73% fly coach class. Having worked for a company that was one of the first to downgrade policy to coach class, the overall savings in the first year was in the millions of dollars; so it’s no wonder more companies and industries (much to the road warrior’s inconvenience) have downgraded to a "coach-only" policy.  It’s also no coincidence that, due to supply and demand, a lot of global airlines have eliminated first class and created a mid-tier class between business and coach -- reducing business-class seats and installing flat bed seats. I find it ironic that airlines created business class because companies would no longer pay for first class, and now the same thing is happening to international business class. A proverbial "Everything old is new again" scenario!  Personally, I think airline revenue management people just like to keep the churn going to maintain job security!

Now that international business and meetings travel is rising again, meetings managers should take great care to ensure that policies on spending in overseas locations are well communicated to each and every attendee. More international travel should also spur you to step up best practices around risk management, for example, making sure your meetings management technology can instantly give you data on where your attendees are -- should an emergency arise and you need to get them home.   

Speaking of international travel, I'm heading to Melbourne, Australia (talk about long-haul!) to the NBTA Australia conference, where I'll be speaking on Strategic Meetings Management: The Last Frontier of Managed Travel Spend.  If you're attending, please come to the session -- August 23, 11:30 am to 12:15 pm. From there I will be heading to Singapore to attend the ACTE Asia-Pacific Education Conference, where I will be moderating a panel on Thursday, August 26, 10:30 am – 11:30 am. The topic: A New Relationship Between Transient Travel and Meetings. It'll feature Aileen London, Senior Manager of Global Meetings Services, APAC, Oracle as well as Meredith Smith, Travel manager - APJ, Merck.  If you happen to be attending either conference, please come to the sessions and I would enjoy an opportunity to meet you!    

If you're working under a strict budget (and who isn't these days?), I recommend that you take a look at a new report authored by the NBTA Foundation and Concur. The report highlights the "best" and "worst" of 50 U.S. cities' travel taxes -- that is, cities with the highest to lowest taxes on rental cars, hotels and meals.

First, let me tell you about the report's overall findings: Shockingly, on average, travel-related services taxes and fees boost visitor costs by 56% over cities' general sales taxes. In the most extreme, the report found that costs rose by 144% over sales taxes.  Now as someone who travels a lot for his job, I’ve experienced these extraneous taxes over and over again. I got a great fare on a recent booking on Southwest for a personal trip, but the taxes and fees added a whopping $76 dollars to the ticket price! Consider, too, our poor friends in the car rental business who can’t raise their rates because that industry is overrun with state and federal taxes and surcharges that add so much to a car rental transaction that, if the supplier did raise rates due to economic pressures, people would just walk away...maybe take the bus.

This is a report that was clearly designed to help buyers make better choices about where to steer their meetings dollars. The data is presented in a variety of ways, for example, the top 50 markets are ranked by overall travel tax burden (including general sales tax and discriminatory or travel-specific taxes) and, separately, by discriminatory travel tax burden -- minus general sales taxes. You can also find data for central city and airport locations, as the taxes for those separate locations can be different, too.

Just to show you how those different statistics can affect choices for cost-conscious buyers, take a look at these report findings:


Cities with highest total taxes:

- Chicago, New York, Boston, Seattle, Minneapolis

Cities with the highest discriminatory travel taxes:

- Portland, OR, Boston, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, New York

Cities with the lowest overall taxes:

- Fort Lauderdale and Fort Myers, FL, Portland, OR; Detroit and Honolulu

Cities with the lowest discriminatory travel taxes:

- All in California: Orange County, San Jose, Burbank, San Diego and Ontario

Why do I think that this report -- which is available to NBTA members and Concur clients -- is so valuable? For one, planners and organizers can refer to it when putting together meetings and events to avoid high-cost cities and keep within their budgets. And, on a more strategic level, meeting, procurement and travel managers can use the information to consult with their finance department folks to determine whether moving events to lower-tax cities could result in overall program cost savings.   

Bravo, NBTA Foundation and Concur for the new research! I hope this report is used by planners and managers alike as the "go to" standard for information and data on travel tax burdens -- many of them way too heavy. This should provide the ammo the industry needs to make a powerful statement about the power of meetings purse strings to local governments that impose such high taxes on business and meetings travelers! And if your blood is still boiling, get behind all of the industry lobbying efforts to get government officials and bureaucrats to stop the "taxation without representation" activities that seem to proliferate in our industry and marketplace.

Sometimes bright news for the hotel industry doesn't necessarily translate into good news for corporate buyers.

According to a recent article in BTN, the party is just about over for companies negotiating low hotel room rates (due to the recession), as hoteliers cite rising demand and a slowdown in supply growth.  Many hotel companies' second-quarter earnings have come in stronger than expected, and they're warning that buyers should be ready for requests for increases at the bargaining table.

“Buyers should prepare for the most aggressive negotiating posture in three years,” Bjorn Hanson, who is divisional dean of the New York University Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management, said in the article. “In discussions three or four months ago, the thought was there would be a small increase, if any, in rates in 2011. This increased amount of business travel has shifted the balance of power.”

Expect the largest rate increases to come from the upper-upscale and luxury tiers. But in BTN, Hanson predicted that even those higher rates will seem like a good deal to buyers -- because the rates will still be pre-recession...below 2007 levels. 

Based on the news above, this is where I want all buyers to accelerate their risk mitigation activities. It's worth repeating what the robot in the old "LOST IN SPACE" TV show said whenever danger lurked: “Danger, Will Robinson!.” Hotels will likely ramp up their cancellation and attrition clauses due to the increased demand for sleeping rooms and meeting space.  If you haven’t created a standard contract template or at least developed an addendum collaboratively with your legal, contract and procurement teams, you will be at great risk when the balance of power shifts back to the hotel suppliers.

Some good news for meetings buyers, though: rate negotiations will still be more fruitful for buyers in convention cities, such as Las Vegas and Orlando, because meetings demand recovery is still taking shape (although the U.S. Travel Association sees a 7% jump in meeting spend this year, versus a 15% decline last year). The same could be said for Europe's tepid recovery.

This is positive news for hoteliers, who in 2011 will get their first crack at raising rates in a long while. But, as we enter negotiation season, this is also a good time for meetings managers, many of whom are still bound by restrictive budgets, to think more creatively and explore lodging strategies that provide more value for less. For example, it's a good idea to approach new hotels that, under a recent supply streak, have opened in major cities and are eager for business.

This is a key time, too, to rely on meeting planning technology to source for hotels, for example, to broaden search criteria in order to find new, more affordable properties and build up a history of buying leverage with those hotels -- for future negotiations.  In this period of change, ensuring planners are complying to your policies and procedures and making sure that your SMMP is truly centralized and being adhered to is another winning way to keep your buying power at its strongest. 

Here in hot and humid Houston, I was much surprised with the announcement by the National Business Travel Association (That's its name for now, anyway!) at the annual convention and exposition that the organization next year will be known as the Global Business Travel Association. As a former executive and officer of NBTA, I’ve been in many meetings and discussions about changing NBTA’s branding to something else.  Quite frankly, I have to say that I've seen it coming for years.

On Monday, the first full working day of the convention, NBTA President and CEO Craig Banikowski said that the name change is due to the evolving nature of the organization -- that is, global in scope and character.  He said that just as people working in our industry have come to re-think their jobs as global in nature, so too has the organization.

Don't get me wrong. When I say I've seen this coming for years, I'm not claiming psychic powers or inside information. What I'm saying is that, through my past at HP in a global category manager role, in addition to working closely with our own customers and business partners (and increasingly more and more beyond the 50 states) we, ourselves, at StarCite, have built a more global business. (For example, Corporate RFPs within StarCite's Global Online Marketplace were up 82% for the first five months of 2010, compared to the same period last year.). And, if you could take a look at my frequent flyer mileage statements, you'd see that I have become a truly global evangelizer of the wisdom of strategic meetings management (although sometimes with the very necessary help of translators).

So I truly "get" Craig's connection to how our changing jobs reflect the NBTA morphing into a more global entity. And I especially applaud Craig's comments about the change: "As your elected president and CEO, my primary strategic focus is taking NBTA from being a national organization to being a truly global business group that gives you seamless access to best-in-class resources, information and the global network you need—anytime, anyplace."     

Progress and change; good move NBTA!

I found a couple of really interesting findings from a broad, new study by Egencia and the NBTA Foundation on the importance of travel policy to good business travel management -- and a few of the results touch on groups and meetings, specifically. I thought I'd share because I'm always trying to spread the word about how setting and enforcing strong policies will transform your meetings management program.

The study is called The Corporate Travel Policy: Benchmarking and Insight Study, and it includes responses from 689 organizations (with a range of those spending less than $1 million on travel to those with tabs of $50 million or higher) from the U.S. and Canada.

As I often hear in my conversations with companies, the survey confirms that few today (although I feel that the number is still growing) address meetings in their travel policy. The survey found that 54% don't include meetings in policy, while 6% said they don't know. Four in 10 define groups and meetings by size or cost, and/or have requirements to register or review such events.

The new NBTA-Egencia study also found that only 22% require that groups and meetings be registered centrally. That makes it challenging to negotiate with hotels and other suppliers when you don’t have complete spend information and breakout of the spend -- in terms of transient versus meetings. And if you don't know that a trip is actually for a meeting, how can you collect data and analyze reports about meetings to ensure preferred suppliers are being used or cost-control methods are being enforced? Also, by not registering meetings centrally, you're missing out on the chance to apply workflow rules that promote cost-consciousness, for example, routing meeting requests to approvers (those guardians of policy), as well as attaching a standard pre-approved and vetted contract addendum to safeguard your organization from hotel cancellation and attrition fees. (By the way, the survey found only 28% require that meeting and event contracts be vetted through an attorney!  Really? That may be worse odds than gambling!.

There have been other recent studies that have reported some discouraging numbers on the meetings management front. But as I've said before, I am confident that the adoption of best practices by companies is continuing, as the benefits of SMMP receive more attention in the media and the marketplace, the emphasis on SMM education grows (e.g. the creation and advance of the SMMC program) and our struggling economy continues to put pressure on companies to find additional ways of reducing costs while bringing in new revenue.   

Thanks to Egencia and the NBTA Foundation for this valuable new view of the state of North American meetings management!

Want to learn more about the link between strong policy and saving meetings dollars. Check out this replay of a recent StarCite webinar!

I hear the seats are filling up fast (100 + so far) for the panel discussion on SMMP Maturity Models that I'll be presenting at next week during the NBTA convention in Houston -- on Tuesday, August 10th, from 8:30 a.m. to 9:45 a.m.

The session (#TA7) will offer a great chance to learn more about the new SMMP Maturity Model developed by the NBTA Groups & Meetings Committee -- in partnership with StarCite -- and it will give you a chance to gauge just where you are in the strategic meetings management process. The model offers plenty of examples for learning new best practices. To sum it up in very plain language, the new SMMP Maturity Model is a kind of roadmap for continual improvement and advancement in meetings management. So, if you're going to the NBTA conference, I suggest that you register now to grab one of those fast-disappearing seats!

My dear friend Kari Kesler, who is President & Chief Strategist at her own consulting shop, KK Strategic Solutions, will be moderating. I'll be presenting along with Paulette Miklas, CCTE, CMP, Corporate Travel & Meeting Manager at M & T Bank, as well as Tracey Wilt, who is Manager of Global Travel & Meetings Management at Xerox Corporation.

My StarCite colleague and partner in crime, Linda McNairy, who is Vice President of Business Development, as well as chair of the NBTA Groups & Meetings Committee, will also be busy with her own session the same day, Tuesday the 10th, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. She'll be moderating a panel, #TB9, called "Small Meetings = Big Problems?" Linda's session will illustrate various management strategies around small meetings and also feature models of success. I urge you to sign up for this one, too, because if you've got a lot of small meetings at your organization that have slipped under the management radar, you'll walk away with a toolkit that will assist you in developing an appropriate approach for centralized management. Linda's panelists will include: Tim Bone, Director of Union Conventions at Event & Travel; Renee Epple, Vice President, Global Innovations, American Express Business Travel; Charlene Rabideau, CMM, Senior Vice President, Account Management & Operations, at BCD Meetings and Incentives; and Julius Robinson, Vice President, Global Sales, Intermediaries, for Marriott International.       

I'm looking forward to a great convention this year and another chance to catch up with colleagues and friends and to continue spreading the word about the power of strategic meetings management and its positive effect on the corporate bottom line. Hope to see you there! Please feel free, too, to stop by our booth -- #2018 and say, ‘hi.’ 

Oh one more thing, whether you are a Direct or Allied member of NBTA, please take the time to vote for your new Board of Directors.  The candidates running for a Board position will be representing your interests in the years to come; so it’s important that your voice is heard and reflected in your vote.  You will have numerous opportunities to vote, so exercise your right to choose NBTA leadership.  See you in Houston!

I've been meaning to congratulate CWT Travel Management Institute, the research arm of Carlson Wagonlit Travel, for its study on the state of meetings management -- Meetings and Events: Where Savings Meet Success. StarCite collaborated extensively with CWT on the research, which substantiated what we already know, that companies can save an average 10% to 25% of their Meetings and Events (M&E) spend when they apply best practices to such areas as policy and compliance, sourcing, and processes. 

The report's top savings mark is in line with benchmarking statistics that StarCite has been finding among our customer base, that is, using meetings management automation to make budgeting, planning, sourcing, attendee management and other key meetings tasks more efficient can save you up to 25% of meetings spend.  

The new study says that savings and ROI from meetings come from three key areas:

- Creating or fine-tuning an organization-wide meetings policy and enforcing compliance,
- Sourcing best practices, for example, selecting a limited number of preferred suppliers for accommodations and venues, enforcing usage of preferred suppliers and defining standard contract terms and conditions to help maximize purchasing power and protect an organization from onerous cancellation and attrition fees.
- Technology that optimizes processes such as online registration and aids in strategic meetings management.

I have spent a lot of my time evangelizing around the world via industry panels, conferences and with customer round tables highlighting these very same recommendations. On the issue of policy alone, I've repeatedly offered advice about the importance of at least establishing or updating and mandating policy since this blog started. Remember, you can’t expect people to do what’s right for your company in absence of a policy; so take the guesswork out and give employees M&E policies and/or guidelines or they'll make decisions based on their interpretation of “doing the right thing,” and that may not be what’s good for your company.

What I really like about the new CWT-StarCite survey are the practical steps it offers for maximizing meetings management, including:

- Analyzing spend company-wide to allow firms to estimate total spend and begin taking the reins to set up a centralized meeting management organization,
- Designing a well-defined policy that spells out precise rules, standard contract terms and specific processes,
- Selecting and negotiating with preferred suppliers and meetings services and technology partners -- allowing companies to save and benefit from outside expertise,
- Establishing a formal planning process that defines business objectives and sets a formal approval process -- for consistency and compliance and getting the ultimate ROI,
- Replacing manual processes with automated meetings management tools to perform tasks such as attendee registration and sourcing -- which saves time and labor, improves data quality  and spend management overall,
- Consolidating to a single payment solution, such as a meetings charge card, enabling companies to better analyze data, improve compliance and boost leverage with meetings vendors
- Evaluating the ROI of meetings, including attendee satisfaction, savings, compliance and other metrics.

Oh, one other thing. I must say that I'm a bit discouraged by another finding of the study -- that two-thirds of the more than 200 meeting planners surveyed manage their events in a decentralized way. I say that I'm discouraged, but I still have faith that more and more firms are seeing the need to centralize management of their meetings, especially in today's economic climate -- where every expense is being scrutinized.  The real winner in this common decentralized environment is one company, Microsoft, because that means there’s a ton of Excel spreadsheets that are being manually maintained and utilized often times simultaneously with little to no time to verify accuracy.  Sound frightening and inefficient?  I assure you this is what’s happening globally every day in decentralized programs at companies who conduct meetings and events as part of their business.

Seems like more and more surveys, as well as individual companies, are reporting positive news in terms of a comeback in business travel and meetings. And it makes me happy to read about each and every one.

This time, according to a BTN article, American Express reported that its earnings from corporate travel sales ballooned year over year by 28% during the second quarter, and that corporate travel growth outpaced leisure travel sales slightly. In the same issue, David Kong, CEO of Best Western International, predicted stronger demand from corporate travel buyers who are now readying their RFPs to send out. He said that Best Western's reservations in the past 90 days have picked up by double digit percentages -- compared to where they were a year ago.     

Things are looking up here at StarCite, too. As I recently reported, corporate client RFPs for meetings services in our marketplace have grown 82% from January to May 2010, compared to the same period in 2009.

But I keep thinking that amidst all this good news, there's even better news: I'm more sure than ever that the state of business travel and meetings management has changed for the good and will continue to evolve. Travel, purchasing and meetings managers are buying smarter and adopting intelligent techniques and best practices to watch over their companies' budgets. This is the silver lining in the proverbial dark cloud of the recession and travel pullback.

And one milestone sign of the "new normal" is that the first students of this year's inaugural Strategic Meetings Management Certificate (SMMC) program will officially graduate at this year's NBTA in Houston -- just around the corner August 8-11. Personally, I can't wait to witness that event, having created and launched the NBTA's Groups & Meetings Committee and helped to spark the idea of a meetings management certification.

I hope you plan on attending NBTA, too. And if you bump into me, please say "hi" and tell me about any meetings management progress you may be making at your organization.

I've been meaning to write about AirPlus International's new survey about use of social media by corporate executives. Recently, the business travel card company came out with  "Social Media Making Inroads for Managing Travel," a new study that is part of the company's monthly "The Wire...from AirPlus" series of monitors on business travel trends.

AirPlus's new survey gives us the latest snapshot of the growing power of social media tools in managing travel and meetings -- something that I, too, have been writing about and keeping track of myself in this blog. Last year, AirPlus also did a survey on the same topic, allowing it to compare responses to determine changes in the social media scene. AirPlus, which polled 67 travel professionals in Europe and the U.S., l found this year that a higher percentage of corporate travel professionals used social media, specifically:

- LinkedIn users held steady at about 58% annually;
- Facebook participants increased by almost 25% by a year ago;
- Twitter fans doubled year-over-year in this month’s survey.

What's powerful about social media is that the tools aren't just for meetings managers to promote communication between attendees and to make it easier for planners to distribute course content, updates and other information about events, but it's also a great way for suppliers to expand and increase communications with customers.

I think we, in ever greater numbers on all sides of the industry, are continuing to explore valuable social media experiments. And whether it's attendees posting their impressions of meetings on Facebook, planners taking virtual tours of hotels located on the other side of the world, meeting managers and suppliers forming professional online communities or hotels sending companies tweets about updates and special offers, we're only beginning to see the many benefits of employing social media to strategically manage meetings.

There's a new and very telling survey out about senior meeting managers, their strategies, average salaries and other important data. The story about it is definitely worth checking out on Meetingsnet.com because some of the numbers are eye-openers (at least they were for me).

Take salaries. Nearly one-third of senior meeting managers made $75,000 to $99,999 in 2009, while another 26% earned between $100,000 and $124,999. And as terrible as 2009 was in terms of the fall-off in business travel and meetings, most senior managers were still rewarded for keeping costs in line or finding new ways to strategically manage meetings expenditures: last year more than 61% polled got a salary increase and 83% got a bonus.

But as far as salaries go, what pleasantly surprised me was the finding that, while 37% are responsible for corporate travel and meetings, there was little difference in their compensation and that of those responsible only for meetings (only a difference of about $5,500). I guess this is a classic case of being asked to do more with shrinking budgets -- something that's pretty common place these days across all industries.

The survey, created by Corporate Meetings & Incentives magazine, along with the NBTA Foundation and Financial & Insurance Conference Planners magazine, revealed that just about two-thirds outsource sourcing for hotels and other suppliers, as well as contracting, and more than half farm out both registration and on-site logistics.  I was struck reading those stats because I just got finished swinging through Asia-Pacific, meeting with companies at a series of round table discussions on the value of an SMMP combined with automation (like e-sourcing) that's designed to reduce costs and labor associated with sourcing processes. (Don't take my word for it alone; check out this replay of a webinar on SMMP and technology! It’s just a matter of time before this trend hits the other geographic regions as companies look for new ways to reduce costs to better compete worldwide.  Cultural differences are one thing, but the bottom line is a major change management driver.

Most encouraging about this survey is the finding showing that just over two-thirds either have an SMMP in place now or plan to implement one within the next two years. And the largest percentage, 44%, implemented their SMMPs over three years ago, with the next biggest group, about 21%, saying that they've taken the plunge about a year ago. That shows growing momentum, a hopeful sign. Meanwhile, nearly one-quarter have gone global with their SMMP, and another quarter or so plan to.

I encourage you to check out this survey. If you're a meeting planner and/or travel manager, it could be a great way to benchmark your salary against others (Of course if you’re one of the lucky few whose compensation is above the norm, you may want to just keep that information to yourself!), and the findings also dramatize the incredible progress companies are making in strategically managing their events. 

Even though I'm traveling through Asia-Pacific this week taking part in a series of round table discussions on meetings management, I'm still keeping up with industry news. And I was heartened to read about some real positive developments on the business travel recovery front.
 
Smith Travel Research has just come out with new numbers that says revenues, rates and occupancies during May were up in many markets worldwide -- on a year-over-year basis.
 
For example, in the Americas, occupancies climbed by 7.5% above May 2009. Rates in this region were flat, with some exceptions, including New York, which saw a 15% increase. In the economic powerhouse that is Brazil, rates in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo climbed, too. But on the other end of the spectrum, Chicago saw the largest rate rate of decrease -- 5%.
 
While I'm here in Asia-Pacific, it's interesting to see that this region had the largest increases in revenues, rates and occupancies than all others globally, according to STR, which I read about in BTN. Occupancies here were up year over year by more than 15%, rates by nearly 9% and RevPar by over 25%. Some outstanding occupancy numbers for individual markets here: Shanghai up 55%, Beijing up over 34% and Hong Kong up nearly 29%.  And yes, our round table corporate customers have all confirmed their respective company spend is rising and travel moratoriums have been lifted to some degree.
 
I'm happy to see that companies globally are traveling more, and I'm sure, as usual, a very big share of that is for meetings -- even if most companies don’t realize that yet. As we climb out of negative territory, however, it's the perfect opportunity for companies to assess how much they spend on meetings and then try to gain power over costs and additional leverage with suppliers via strategic meetings management best practices, for example, centralized planning and e-sourcing. At a minimum, you should have all meetings and events registered so you can build an emergency contingency plan for employees worldwide.
 
If your company is one of those that’s stepping up business and meetings travel, here's a very helpful whitepaper to read on how to uncover hidden meetings spend within your organization and then harness the information to build and execute a powerful SMMP. 

Yesterday was the last day of our Global Leadership Symposium in Boca Raton, Florida, and I have to say I enjoyed myself thoroughly -- mixing with clients from around the world, our valued supplier partners and other industry executives and friends.

Anybody who's ever been to corporate meetings or events knows that -- no matter if they're in a location surrounded by palm trees or airport runways -- they're usually made up of long days spent going to educational sessions and seminars (even trade shows, like ours to the left), as well as networking receptions and dinners (I wish those who criticize meetings as "wasteful" had more of a clue about how busy a meetings day really is!). And yesterday was no exception for me at our symposium. I had the pleasure of leading a breakout session on "Mitigating Meetings Risk & Maximizing Compliance," and from the questions and comments I received from the group who attended, it was obvious to me that protecting corporate interests as well as traveling attendees is a growing area of concern for meetings managers today.

Many in the audience have worked with their legal departments to create formal contracts, or addendum, that they're attaching to e-RFPs when dealing with hotels to protect themselves from excessive attrition and/or cancellation fees. We discussed this strategy and it's agreed that it is a highly effective one. Others are tightening rules to make sure only those with experience and knowledge of meetings purchasing deal with suppliers. Still others are mining data from their meetings management automation, such as attendee management tools, to run quick reports on the whereabouts of attendees during emergencies so that they can get travelers home quickly. And among many other points raised during the session, I stressed the importance of creating and continually fine-tuning corporate meetings policy -- and getting senior management endorsement -- as a way to mitigate risk and raise compliance.

Managing and preventing risk is such a hot topic today -- not just because companies are making stricter demands on meeting, travel and purchasing managers to contribute to the bottom line, but also because it's a dangerous world out there (Has it ever been safe?), and companies want to keep their employees protected as much as possible. Most importantly, what many companies neglect to address is the gap in identifying and locating employees attending a meeting that has no travel booking associated with the event. They have a false sense of security that the current process of relying on their TMC partners to run a review of PNRs and generate a list of employees who may be in harm’s way is sufficient for their contingency plans.  Wrong!  Consider this, if the majority of corporate meetings being held carry no travel booking (i.e. the meeting is at a local hotel in a bigger city nearby, etc.) you have no way of identifying and assisting those meeting attendees because you don’t have a process in place that reviews meetings and attendees.

For more insight into mitigating meetings risk, check out this replay of a StarCite webinar!

Watch out "Jersey Shores," today I'm starring in my first-ever "reality" show at StarCite's 2010 Global Leadership Forum at the Boca Raton Resort & Club in Boca Raton, FL and I’m not going to show my abs like "The Situation" always does, either (lucky you).

Actually, we're calling it the "StarCite Reality Show," and it's a panel discussion on meetings management that I'm sharing with some very seasoned and knowledgeable industry experts, including Tim Bone, Director of Conventions, Events, and Corporate Travel at Washington, D.C.-based Service Employees International Union and Lisa Kermode, CEO of strategic management consulting firm, Kerm Consulting.

Aside from getting a chance to discuss industry issues and the challenges of implementing meetings management in a corporation, it's going to be great fun, I'm sure, because we've actually got a couple of comedians from the famed Second City comedy team in Chicago to moderate. I'm sure there'll be laughs all around to bring a lighter touch to the very serious subject matter of how companies can add new levels of control and savings to their meetings spend with SMMP best practices.

By the way, our Global Leadership Symposium is a three-day event that draws senior meetings executives from clients all over the world, our supplier partners, as well as top industry officials. For example, this morning, NBTA Executive Director Michael McCormick gave us his perspective on the growing importance of SMMP and how important a cost-control discipline it has become to companies -- right alongside corporate travel management. According to a recent NBTA survey, meetings management experienced the biggest increase (67%) among corporate travel management trends. More evidence: the wildly successful Strategic Meetings Management Certification (SMMC) program, officially launched by NBTA last year, and which I was happy to have helped make a reality.

And, on the supplier side, we also heard some interesting trends from Julius Robinson, Vice President of Global Sales Intermediaries & Chairman, Innovention Network, at Marriott, for example, the integration of meetings with videoconferencing, as well as the rise of green meetings.

Tomorrow, I'll be up at bat again in the morning, this time talking about strategies to mitigate meetings risk -- which these days has really become a hot priority for companies, whether it's because they're sending employees to meetings all over the world (sometimes to some very scary places) or because they want to take the utmost care in protecting their investment by implementing strict purchasing rules or developing contract addendums that protect them from onerous cancellation fees. 

Sounds like a full schedule, I know, but being in Boca during the longest days of the year, being with customers, friends and colleagues, while enjoying spectacular
sunsets isn't bad either.

More tomorrow!

Different companies have different priorities when it comes to being good corporate citizens. Your firm may be focused on feeding the hungry, while another may be into cleaning up the environment (or at least committed to preventing it from becoming more polluted). Or maybe you're lucky enough to work for a company with a wide target list of how to help out humanity.

Regardless of the particular program, there are great ways that you can build a more socially responsible strategic meetings management program (SMMP).

I was very pleased to read an article in Procurement.travel's June issue focusing on this very subject, and it gave a lot of great examples of how you can build CSR practices into each and every meeting. The piece gives proper due to the NBTA's 62-page toolkit, developed last year by the group's Corporate Social Responsibility Committee, that outlines many areas of responsible travel procurement. And it also gave some great tips on being more proactive in building socially responsible meetings, including some super advice for dealing with vendors, including:

- Sharing your CSR objectives with hotels and other vendors in your RFPs, and including questions that will allow you to measure eco-impact; also, asking vendors to share their CSR policies in responses;
- Requiring all invoices be delivered electronically;
- Requesting vendors estimate their carbon footprint on the services they're providing;
- Establishing SLAs for green components in contracts -- with penalties for failure to meet conditions and incentives for hitting goals

NBTA's toolkit also recommends strong communication to employees about your company's CSR initiatives, for example, via attendee registration automation. Share details such as :

- Amount of carbon emissions to be reduced over a specific time period
- Amount of internal meetings intended to be reduced
- Tips on how attendees can reduce their carbon footprint at meetings

Overall, its crucial to strategically build CSR-responsible meetings practices and policies that planners should follow, for example:

- Creating a CSR policy where at least a minimum of components can be applied at all events
- Educating planners on green policies and how to incorporate them into eco-friendly events
- Budgeting for green policies and requirements
- Sharing reporting on green meetings outcomes with senior executives
- Establishing goals for meetings alternatives (where it's suitable), such as virtual meetings   

Even in this financially focused age of ours, when every meetings nickel is being counted, meetings managers can continue to push for incorporating social responsibility (both tactics and strategies) into their meetings program. We can save and be better citizens at the same time!   

I've been traveling so much lately that I haven't been able to write about a recent Meeting Professionals International (MPI) Business Barometer survey that I saw that indicates good, steady growth in meetings. So, here goes:
 
In the survey, an MPI poll of its Industry Advisory Panel, a group of senior-level meetings professionals, found in April that 58% of respondents (about two-thirds of which were meeting planners) saw business conditions more favorable than the same time in 2009, with 25% calling them worse. Looking down the road a few months (which should be right about now), 65% foresaw favorable conditions, and only 17% saw negative conditions.
 
Meanwhile, two months before the last survey, in February, 43% saw conditions as favorable and 31% perceived them as negative.  A story that I read about the survey said that that was the first time since June 2009 that favorable responses outweighed negative reactions.
 
So, it looks like April's numbers are even better, and when I see June's numbers I'll report on them, too, here.
 
But the latest MPI survey also points out a rather strange phenomenon happening in corporate meetings that's still plaguing the industry. First the good news: The poll noted that more than four in 10 (43%) say domestic corporate meetings had seen the greatest growth over the past year. Now the bad: The same number noted that domestic corporate meetings took the greatest dive year-over-year, too. (This may sound odd, but unfortunately, I hear this alot from meetings managers.)
 
On a positive track, 27% said they've had an increase in domestic association meeting business, 11% said the same about international corporate meeting business and 8% and 6%, respectively, reported more international association and government meetings versus a year ago.
 
Overall, I'm encouraged by MPI's poll; it's good news for our industry, and I'm glad to see that there's been an increase in meetings activity. I'm looking forward to seeing if the advance continues.

But with a slowly filling cup, comes more responsibility to design and execute a good strategic meetings management program, to make sure you're keeping within budgets, staying on track with cost-control goals, eliciting senior executive support, addressing risk and other key strategic goals.
 
Now is the time, as we recover, to remain vigilant with our strategic goals! 

The recent announcement of the merger between United Airlines and Continental Airlines, right on the heels of the marriage of Delta Airlines and Northwest Airlines, sent a lot of folks scrambling to make sense of a new landscape of suppliers in the airline industry. One thing is for certain, competition will be reduced, which will eventually lead to higher consumer prices. But more importantly, the chasm between the behemoths and the rest of the industry just got  significantly wider and what that means to corporate travel and meeting programs is anyone’s guess.  Will that mean some shotgun weddings for stand-alones like American Airlines, US Air, Alaska, Southwest, etc.?  Time will tell…

From the meetings industry perspective, the airlines used to have separate sales efforts around business travel and groups and meetings.  When one of the first round of cutbacks took place (Who can count at this point?), a lot of airlines abdicated their separate strategies and combined groups and meetings into their transient agreements.  In hindsight was that wise?  It depends on who you speak with, but I would say that they sacrificed their long term strategies for the higher-yield groups and meeting business in favor of a short term cost-cutting gain.  The jury is still out on this, but what’s interesting is that the airlines appear to be re-thinking their positions in the lucrative groups and meetings industry.

Witness Lufthansa, which just unveiled a new product for large-scale groups and incentives. And then there's Delta’s formal announcement after they acquired Northwest Airlines (my former employer) that they would reinstate a separate Groups and Meetings team to focus on this specific area of the industry. This doesn't surprise me because Northwest Airlines never eliminated their Groups and Meetings division, and they maintained a steady revenue stream from it.

Bottom line is this: Less competition invariably always means higher prices, but if the end result is financially stronger and more secure airline suppliers, then it may be worth the additional price increases and route integrity that less competition brings.  It may even mean the end of or at least a reduction in the onslaught of additional fees and charges that the airlines are currently imposing because they need more revenue and can’t make it happen with pricing initiatives -- due to all the competition.  The one thing I do know is this, change is constant and you can either adapt or go and stand your ground and get by-passed.  

The stakes just got higher and more critical for companies lacking a SMMP, as the many numerous changes in the supplier base and industry will have a big effect on the bottom line for corporations worldwide.  Can you really afford to continue to forgo visibility of spend, access to defensible data, consolidated processes, risk mitigation -- amidst the collective impact of an industry in transition?