At this year's Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) convention in Los Angeles, one component of business travel - meetings and events - is emerging as a major topic of interest among the nearly 4,000 corporate travel buyers and suppliers in attendance.
"There have been lots of conversations taking place around meetings this year," said Milton Rivera, vice president of global business development for American Express Meetings & Events. "This year, more than any other previous year, has been very active from a meetings discussion for GBTA, and there's so much activity and curiosity about meetings."
In the past, the annual GBTA convention has primarily focused on the needs of corporate travel buyers and corporate transient travel programs, but this year it appears that more and more buyers and suppliers are acknowledging a growing trend: the consolidation of corporate travel, meetings and events.
"You see more and more travel managers handling meetings now, too," said Rivera, "and I think you're going to see more of that going forward, too." He added, "More organizations are adopting a collaborative perspective to holding meetings and events and managing their corporate travel programs. Two or three years ago, it was more procurement driven; now, it's more about collaboration and bringing all those parties together - finance, procurement, meeting planners and owners - to achieve savings and effectiveness."
That growing consolidation trend was reflected in a number of educational sessions included in this year's convention lineup. On Monday, July 28, "Big Data for Meetings and Events: Bridging the Gap Between Marketing, Corporate Hospitality, and Procurement" (http://successfulmeetings.com/Strategy/Meeting-Strategies/How-Big-Data-Can-Impact-Meetings-and-Events/) featured a panel of various meeting planners and corporate travel managers who are using data to create more effective meetings and meeting experiences, achieve compliance and obtain better negotiated rates.
"Transient travel and meetings and events travel are merging," said Amy Margolis, senior principal of procurement for CA Technologies' Global Procurement in North America. "We're just now starting to get good data from this, and we need this data for vendor management and supplier relationships. We need to show them this data so they'll work with us more on negotiated rates and dynamic pricing."
Moderator Anthony Miller, the chief marketing officer for Lanyon, also remarked, "Group and transient travel are now being considered together more and more."
Other educational sessions that focused on strategic meetings management (SMM) also emphasized the growing trend for collaboration.
Floyd Widener, senior vice president of CWT Meetings & Events Worldwide, said he's seeing more and more overlapping. "I'm seeing organizations that do events are kind of overlapping the process, and that different divisions are coming together. The lines between those people who manage corporate travel and strategic meetings management are starting to blur, depending on the regions." He notes that while SMM is beginning to catch on in North America, it has yet to hit Europe and Asia Pacific.
On the hotel side, Kerri Hannaford, senior VP of sales and distribution of global sales in North America for Accor, said she is also noticing much more "consolidation of corporate business travel with meetings and incentives."
Looking ahead, Widener, Hannford and Rivera noted they believe this trend will only continue to grow. "This journey is moving very quickly for so many organizations."