More than 300 delegates attended the VDR's spring conference. Anke Pedersen reports from Berlin.
Travel managers need to offer new ways of travelling for their business travellers because of the risks and danger of climate change.
This was the warning given to delegates at the three-day spring conference in Berlin of the Verband Deutsches Reisemanagement (VDR), the German travel managers' association.
With warnings of permanent damage to the earth because of global warning, the delegates were told that no areas were off limits for change.
The buyers, who outnumbered suppliers at the event, were told they needed to identify opportunities to reduce their car fleets, to think about buying smaller or hybrid-cars even for the CEOs and to pay extra costs for carbon-offsetting on flights.
One point made was that the managers might also need to find ways to minimise or even avoid travelling at all.
The rest of the programme, however, showed that if ecology was a hot topic, there were also others for the conference to consider.
Here the hottest potato was still the consequences of likely upcoming deregulation of the GDSs in Europe. The key words for travel managers here were: full content.
Travel managers, airline managers, travel agencies representatives and even a Policy Officer from the European Commission tried to find a common understanding of how to cooperate after deregulation of the GDSs. But they failed to do so.
While airlines refuse to pay GDS costs any longer or at least minimize them, the EC believes in a win-win-situation for everybody in the market by cancelling or relaxing the CRS code of conduct in 2008.
Marc Hildebrand, general manager business travel Central Europe for American Express, told the airlines: “The only intention you have is of creating the maximum lack of transparency.”
He received even bigger applause when he warned that if there was complete deregulation "the travel industry is going to make its biggest mistake within the last 20 years."
Mr Hildebrand added: "We are one of the very few industrial sectors with a worldwide standardised electronic marketplace."
But while every industry tries to get the same standard, he said the travel industry was going to destroy its own industry standards.
* An instant survey of travel managers of "green" issues and climate change conducted by the VDR found that some were already taking action on it. A small minority (3%) said they already had carbon offsetting schemes or planned them in the near future. About one third said they were considering such schemes and about 25% said they thought this might be a possible action in the future. But there were still substantial numbers who were not sure of their plans on climate change or who did not have any.
* The VDR's autumn conference was due to be held in Warsaw but delegates in Berlin asked for a venue to which they could travel by train rather than fly. The Association is now re-considering where to hold the event.
* see new jobs on BTE's recruitment site www.businesstraveljobs.com