Buying Business Travel is pleased to once again be official partner to the 2015 Business Travel Show. The show has gathered a team of senior buyers join its advisory board, to bring their knowledge and expertise to the conference education programme.
BBT talks to Jafles Pacheco who is global head of travel at Swiss technology group Oerlikon.
What are the current top issues facing travel managers?
Airline joint ventures: more and more airlines in certain alliances are pooling their sales efforts and resources and, by doing that, reducing the leveraging and negotiation possibilities corporates have.
Increasing complexity: the travel world is becoming extremely complex in a constantly changing environment. Every day we have to deal with new fare codes, definitions, new sales channels – NDC – mergers and acquisitions, new vendors. All this dynamism in the travel industry generates an incredible hunger for resources – time, money, etc. on the corporate side. It’s becoming very challenging to be on the top of all this change.
Stakeholder management: this is not a new issue, but definitely one that is on the top of the agenda of all travel managers. This is gaining more and more importance when we think about the increasing and more embracing role of the travel manager today: duty of care, drive savings, drive and influence behavior.
What will be the biggest issue affecting your role in 2015?
Integrating new business into our existing travel management strategy and bringing top-level management up to speed on what is going on in the travel arena. Also, gaining top executives’ understanding that travel management is not only about booking an airline ticket but managing a very complex supply chain of providers. All this at the same time as managing users’ expectations and complying with legal regulatory systems.
You offered to continue on the Business Travel Show advisory board for 2015. Why?
Firstly, with my input, I want to contribute towards keeping the event as a dynamic and valuable communication platform for travel managers in Europe; secondly, I really enjoy the exchange and brainstorming we have in our advisory board meetings. And thirdly, I think it is also a great opportunity to get visibility for my company as a customer of choice for vendors in the travel industry.
How important is it for you to attend the Show?
With the increasing complexity I mentioned above, and the short time we have to cope with everything that is going on, it is so important to have a platform where we can exchange ideas, meet suppliers and peers in the travel industry – by only investing a couple of days of my time per year.
What topics are you looking forward to hearing more about at the Business Travel Show conference?
There are so many topics... stakeholder management, change management, how to better communicate with travellers. But also how to automate processes in different areas of travel, such as hotel negotiation and airfare auditing.
The Business Travel Show is Europe’s largest exhibition and conference for buyers and managers of business travel – 25-26 February 2015 Grand Hall Olympia London.