More than half – 53 per cent – of business travel buyers are now responsible for meetings spend, yet 55 per cent still don’t have a strategic meetings management policy (SMMP) in place.
This is according to a survey of 350 business travel buyers carried out by the Business Travel & Meetings Show.
BTMS is the leading event for the corporate travel and meetings markets, taking place 8-9 February 2011 at Earls Court, London. The show also hosts Europe’s highest quality free to attend industry conference, with three sessions (two case studies and one masterclass) focused specifically on the meetings market.
The first case study has been designed specifically to address the low adoption of SMMPs among travel buyers. Sam Welch, head of account management, BSI, will be joined by Danielle Bartlett, Buying Manager – Group Travel, Tesco, to help buyers develop a framework for implementing an SMMP. They will also focus on M&E policy development and communication as well as the utilisation of internal and external meeting space
The second case study is a meetings management double-header, led by Gareth Crowder, Head of Procurement at Zibrant, who will be talking about ‘Optimising Savings and Controlling Costs in your Meetings and Event Programme’. He will be followed by Derick Shaw, business services manager at Aviva UK and ITM company secretary discussing how to ‘Harness the Latest Tools and Technologies to Exact Maximum Cost Savings in your Meeting Spend.’
The buyer-only meetings masterclass – entitled Become a Meeting Planning Hero! – is being moderated by Peter Haigh, consultant, Hamilton Haigh Associates. Peter will show buyers how to use a meeting planning and evaluation tool to measure the impact and effectiveness of meetings and events and unveil his ROI methodology, which involves five levels of measurement.
“With an increasing number of travel buyers assuming responsibility for meetings, it’s essential that the industry’s leading conference programme embraces and reflects this sea change,” said event director David Chapple.
The Business Travel & Meetings Show conference programme, made up of 26 sessions, is the leading free to attend educational event for the corporate travel market in Europe.
Register for a visitor pass and conference sessions at www.businesstravelshow.com