Meetings, conference and events spend is still a major hurdle facing TMCs, according to the latest research by ITM.
A survey undertaken with ITM”s panel of 120 business travel buyers ” who between them represent more than 40% of the FTSE Top 100 companies ” revealed that consolidating meeting and transient expenditure is still a stumbling block for companies as it is an area that is hard to package.
ITM executive director Paul Tilstone, explained the reasons behind the results: ”With meetings there are more opportunities for things to go wrong on a grander scale. So it”s not surprising that while 65% of travel buyers also manage meetings, 67% manage conferences and 60% manage events expenditure, few have made real headway in terms of savings, policy or compliance,” he said.
Research found that TMCs have yet to overtake specialist venue find and event management companies in the popularity stakes with travel buyers. The survey revealed that although 60% use a combination of the two, 41% rated their specialist meetings agency as excellent or good, compared with 25% for similar services provided by the TMC.
”It is clear that there is limited control on MICE [meetings, incentives, conferences and events] expenditure through policy, authorisation processes and compliance measurements,” added Tilstone. ”Perhaps it is this first step of putting controls in place and measuring activity and spend, which needs to happen before consolidation to a single booking methodology can occur.”