Message for NBTA Paris event
The business travel industry must work together to get itself out of the current economic crisis, Kevin Maguire, president of the National Business Travel Association (NBTA), said.
"This means we must look at how we do things, not only as corporates or suppliers, but how we do things as an industry," he said.
He said the first step was to help educate people in the industry to "see how things are."
He added: "We can't do partnerships without understanding where we are and how we got there."
Mr Maguire said at the Business Travel Show in London in February that the partnership between travel managers and suppliers had broken down.
One of the main goals of the business travel associations at the Crossroads Paris conference next month was to provide information, intelligence and technology to help the industry.
He said the situation of five to ten years ago when the industry did work together had now taken a secondary role. It now had to restore that situation.
Mr Maguire said he hope up to 440 delegates would attend the Crossroads Paris event on May 14-15 at Le Palais des Congrès de Paris organised by Paragon, an umbrella groping of leading business travel associations in the world.
Among the speakers are Kell Ryan, founder of Ryanair who will talk on the future of European aviation, John Plender of the Financial Times who will talk on the economic situation and Arjan van Weele, professor of purchasing and supply management at Eindhoven University of Technology who will talk on personalising travel management.
Among the topics to be discussed are managing rail, calculating the value of business travel, virtual meetings and strategic meetings management.
www.nbta.org www.paragon-partnership.org