GUILD OF BUSINESS TRAVEL AGENTS MEET TO DRAW UP A “ROAD-MAP FOR PROSPERITY”

Britain's business travel leaders are meeting in Shanghai next week to draw up a “road-map for prosperity” and put an end to travel industry turmoil.

The influential Guild of Business Travel Agents, holding its 29th annual conference from May 8-10, has invited decision-makers from airlines, hotels and high-tech companies to help chart a course for the industry's future.

Billed as “Distribution in Turmoil”, the event takes place at the Grand Hyatt Shanghai.

GBTA chief executive Philip Carlisle explains:  “Over the past few years, events outside our control have dictated the pace and nature of progress in our industry, and that has forced travel suppliers and travel purchasers to react accordingly.

“Unfortunately, they all react in different ways, pursuing all kinds of commercial strategies.  One of the prime tasks at the GBTA conference next month will be to pull all these strands together – to set our own agenda, rather than react to someone else's.”

Technological advances have given travel suppliers a range of ways of distributing their products and services, he says, but in their desperation to reach as many potential customers as possible, suppliers have lost control of the distribution process.

“Product is being ‘sold' to all sorts of people, by all sorts of means, by all sorts of providers – it's haphazard and, ultimately, it is self-defeating,” says Carlisle.

“Travel management companies in the GBTA have a major role to play because.  It is in the very nature of our business to bring discipline where there is disorder, cohesion where there is chaos.

“As the continuing business travel recovery gathers pace, the industry needs once again to take the lead in establishing best-practice benchmarks upon which to build the successes of tomorrow.”

Speakers at the GBTA conference include David Scowsill, chief executive officer of Opodo, Paul Dickinson sales & distribution director, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Adrian Parkes commercial director, bmi, John Wallis senior VP marketing, Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, Professor Peter O'Connor of Cornell University, Gordon Wilson, executive vice president and managing director of the international markets region, Cendant, David Jones, executive vice president commercial, Amadeus and Tom Stone, chairman Institute of Travel Management.

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Vanessa Aves/Alex Kindell, Brighter PR, tel: 020 7603 2168, email: Vanessa.aves@brighterpr.co.uk