Travel Agencies find Benefits in Offering Meeting and Event Services

Thousands of travel agencies (leisure and business) scattered all over the world offer travel services but are reluctant to provide groups/meetings service offerings to their clients.   As such, these agencies are missing out on revenue opportunities.  Recently, I spoke with Travel Market Report on the benefits that agencies may experience by offering meeting and event services.

Travel agencies can increase revenue, expand business relationships and improve service by offering meetings, events and incentives to their travel service offerings.  Meetings forge new relationships in an organization. When an agency provides meeting services, it may lead to other prospective business such as helping the organization write a meeting policy, creating a crisis management plan, calculating carbon emissions or instituting virtual meetings.  By adding these services to their catalogue of expertise, an agency can penetrate new business from existing, loyal clients.

 

To read more, go to Travel Market Report, Meetings and Incentives.

http://www.travelmarketreport.com/meetings?articleID=3911&LP=1

 

 

Debi Scholar, CMM, CMP, CTE, CTT

 

Thank you for visiting the T&E Plus Blog on expense management, travel management, business meetings, events, incentives, strategic meetings management, entertainment, virtual meetings, tickets, hotels, airlines, ground transportation plus more...

 

Follow me on Twitter at:  http://twitter.com/debi001or at LinkedIN at http://www.linkedin.com/in/dscholar

 

Debi has the following designations:

·     Wharton Aresty Executive Education/National Business Travel Association (NBTA) Global Leadership Professional (GLP)

·     Meeting Professionals International Certificate in Meetings Management (CMM)

·     Convention Industry Council Certified Meeting Professional (CMP)

·     NBTA Corporate Travel Expert (CTE)

·     Six Sigma Green Belt

·     Chauncey Certified Technical Trainer (CTT)

 

Debi was selected as:

·     Meetings Management  Mover and Shaker by Corporate and Incentive Travel Magazine (2010)

·     Top 20 Changemaker who influenced the meetings management industry by Corporate Meetings and Incentives (2008)

·     Best Meeting Practitioner by Business Travel News (2007)

Comments

[John Arenas]

While I agree that Travel Agencies are still missing a huge opportunity for revenue and deeper client relationships, I have a different perspective on why this is so and how recent developments in meeting management technology are now allowing them to offer these services profitably.

You are certainly right that SOX and Pharma regulations have been drivers for certain large-market clients to demand control, compliance and cost savings for their meetings programs. Mega TMCs have been at the vanguard, responding by developing and offering their clients sophisticated meetings management services, with the help of the latest meeting and attendee management tools, online sourcing and booking technology and payment solutions. These tools allow for central policy management, while allowing any meeting arranger to book on negotiated rates, custom contract and payment terms instantly.

TMCs in the next tier (ARC of $100MM-$1B) do generally provide central meeting desk services for their clients. However, these services are typically limited to sourcing and management of their clients’ largest meetings, not a comprehensive or strategic meeting management program. These TMCs have also shied away from assisting with sourcing of small meetings under 50 attendees, which comprise over 2/3 of meetings in most client companies (a $25B spend in the US alone). Until very recently the profitability of managing these meetings has been hampered by the many manual, ad hoc processes associated budgeting, sourcing, negotiating, booking, managing registrations, rooming lists etc… all of which can now be handled through touch-less online meeting booking and attendee management technology. The migration to providing these services is now underway, much the same way agencies migrated to reselling online self serve booking tools for transient travel.

Even smaller agencies, with client companies that have a simple need for visibility and for maximizing use of preferred suppliers, can now take on more opportunities efficiently by designating a resource within the agency to assist clients with sourcing and booking with online meeting booking tools.

Of course it doesn’t stop there. The same tools that now allow agents to book meeting space, AV, catering and group guest rooms, now offer the ability to book video conferencing and telepresence. Now that’s a whole other blog.

[Susan N Losurdo]

It is important to recognize that in today's economy - corporations are looking to reduce spend and thus 'non-critical' headcount such as internal meeting planning departments. As a result - outsourcing of these services to TMCs has become more and more prevalent. Currently - TMCs are providing the more basic meeting planning services and reaping the benefits but not to their fullest potential. If TMCs work to develop the relationships with their corporate clients - they can slowly build trust and facilitate some change management. TMCs will then be better positioned to propose SMMP to their clients and promote/expand their full service portfolios.