Incoming ACTE president Chris Crowley talks to Bob Papworth about his plans to boost the industry's relevance in the age of the 'empowered traveller'
Earlier this year, when Carlson Wagonlit Travel asked 169 travel managers to prioritise a list of 11 initiatives for 2010, business travellers could have been forgiven for making a beeline for the 'situations vacant' columns.
Behind a plethora of money-saving ploys, "enhancing the traveller experience" was ranked only eighth on the to-do list. Rather more worryingly, "addressing safety and security needs" came even lower, in 10th place - one up from the bottom-placed idea of making travel programmes more eco-friendly. Look after the pennies, the survey results seemed to say, and the people - and planet - can take care of themselves.
Chris Crowley, who this month assumes the presidency of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE), is hoping to change all that. "I think," he says, with an assurance that suggests this is more than just a fanciful notion, "that we are entering the age of the traveller."
Crowley packs in a few miles himself, as BCD Travel's senior vice-president of sales not just for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, but also for the entire Asia-Pacific region, so it may be that there is a hint of self-interest here. However, his point is nonetheless valid.
"You have travellers now who are making decisions that they simply could not have made five or ten years ago," he says. "Travellers have a much greater understanding of preferred supplier relationships, of market forces and of their impact on the environment - the regular traveller has much more information on the effect his or her travel has."
Internet technology, social networking sites and even self-booking tools have given employees easy and instant access to a range of information, encouraging and even requiring them to make their own travel choices.
The traveller who doesn't want to melt ice-caps or take taxis from inexpensive but inaccessible hotels, or who simply doesn't want to be away from the family at the weekend, can now readily find a host of perfectly viable alternative arrangements that fit both his or her needs and those of the employer.
Travel bookers, arrangers, buyers and managers all have to be aware of this new awareness on the part of the traveller, and to learn how to capitalise on it.
"There is a balance to be established with the empowered traveller," says Crowley. "One of the key ways to drive down costs and maintain overview is 'control'. The properly empowered traveller should be delivering cost savings."
The implication is that 'control' is no longer necessarily best achieved by company diktat, but by cutting travellers some slack. If they're allowed to make their own decisions, albeit within carefully pre-defined parameters, they're much more likely to conform - and to be happy to do so.
"While I think control is important, I like there to be interaction and communication between people. Ours is an emotive business, but it's also something that is exciting as well as challenging," says Crowley.
Helping corporate travel executives understand this new 'empowered' traveller, and finding - and sharing - ways of dealing effectively with him or her, is one of Crowley's big ambitions for ACTE.
Echoing the government's 'back to basics' campaign under former prime minister John Major (although hopefully with a more positive outcome), Crowley is advocating a return to ACTE's first principles.
Founded in 1988 in the US, the Association was established to bring suppliers and buyers together to develop "a unique and valuable educational resource for business travel professionals".
Over the two years of his presidential reign, Crowley intends to reinforce that commitment. "I want to help provide a stable and permanent basis for ACTE, to go back to first principles.
"Knowledge flow has changed in the corporate marketplace. In the past, knowledge was something you hoarded and kept - now it's something that you share. I want to encourage better education, better sharing of best practice, better knowledge sharing.
"ACTE's role in the longer term is always going to be one that focuses on education and advocacy."
Part of that "education and advocacy" will centre on the concept of companies as "a series of constituencies. First is the traveller, second is the travel arranger or booker, third the travel procurer, then there is the policy, then the company.
"It's the balancing of these constituencies within the corporate travel environment which is going to be one of the most interesting debates we have."
Equally interesting, if Crowley gets his way, will be ACTE's discussions with other industry sectors.
"ACTE was always about partnership, so I want to have a positive dialogue with suppliers, other travel and procurement organisations, and so on," he says, before adding: "I think our dialogue has become a little bit stilted because we worry about who we are going to offend."
Another of Crowley's key objectives is to boost ACTE's position as a global player. Past perceptions of the organisation as 'too American' prompted a determined effort to bolster its international regions. The new president wants to reunite all the parties under a global banner.
"The first thing to say is that the presidency is a two-year tenure, so you have to be realistic about what you can achieve with a large global organisation but, in the past 10 years in particular, ACTE has had more of a regional membership focus," he says.
"I think we need to be a global organisation with global stakeholders - the key is to be globally strategic, rather than tactical."
ACTE's board member for Europe, Brian Donnelly - regional director, EMEA and Latin America, for FCm Travel Solutions - has high hopes for the new president.
"It could be argued that the appointment of Chris, as our first president to be based in Europe, is long overdue," says Donnelly. "However, ACTE is widely recognised as an organisation that is truly international, and I know Chris to be a truly international business professional, and therefore the fit between our organisation and our new leader is a good one.
"Chris travels extensively as part of his 'day job' and, while combining the two roles will be tough, he has the energy and commitment to make it work."
- Formerly with the Accor group and Concorde Hotels, Chris Crowley is BCD Travel's senior vice-president of sales for EMEA and Asia-Pacific, and this month becomes president of ACTE. A trilingual Arsenal supporter (and there can't be too many of those), Crowley is also both a rock festival devotee and a Bayreuth regular. Oh, and he's getting married in September.