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JetBlue Airways on Thursday launched its first-ever corporate meetings product, with discounts, benefits and restrictions similar to programs offered by their legacy competitors. The CompanyBlue Meetings program is applicable to corporate meetings of at least 15 flyers with the same destination and whose travel is arranged by "designated corporate meeting planners with a single company billing source" through either JetBlue's Web site or a dedicated toll-free number, the carrier said in a statement. Benefits include one complimentary travel certificate for each 40 attendees booked, and an additional "credit for future travel on JetBlue that is equal to the dollar value of the average fare-minus taxes and fees-for every 40 seats booked, to be used toward future JetBlue CompanyBlue Meeting bookings," the carrier said. Travel must be booked at least 60 days before departure with a $50 per-attendee deposit, but the carrier will not require passenger names or final payment until 30 days before the flight. If the date of travel is more than 60 days in the future, the airline will allow seats to be held for two weeks without a deposit and will release up to 10 percent of seats without penalties. JetBlue will waive the $30 change fee for changes up to 10 percent of the total number of booked seats. JetBlue joins most of its low-cost and legacy carrier brethren in offering a similarly constructed discounted public meetings program, with two notable exceptions: Southwest Airlines, which cancelled its program in 2003 (Meetings Today, Dec. 8, 2003), and Delta Air Lines, which did likewise in 2005 (Meetings Today, Jan. 17, 2005).

CWT, Carlson Marketing Partner In European Effort
Carlson Wagonlit Travel and sister company Carlson Marketing have teamed to provide clients with a combined offering to manage meetings and events in Europe, said Carlson Wagonlit Travel CEO Hubert Joly. Eventually, the partners also plan to work together to serve U.S.-based clients. The partnership seeks to provide an option for clients who want to manage meetings on a global scale. "If you are a big global company looking for help for that, there really aren't many players. We realized that by working together, CWT Events and Carlson Marketing could really help a few of our clients. In a service business, that's what you do," Joly said. The nonexclusive arrangement, formalized in a strategic partnership at the beginning of the year, has so far been applicable in Europe, but could be implemented in the United States, where the two firms—one owned wholly, the other in part, by Carlson Cos.—largely work independently of each other. "In the United States, Carlson Marketing will do the big events and we'll do the smaller ones and sometimes we'll work together for a number of our common clients," Joly said, adding that responses from clients have been favorable. "Some of our global clients really value the combined global footprint," said Joly. The news of the partnership comes after Carlson Marketing made strides to promote localized services across the globe last year. It also follows the trend of travel management companies working to standardize their global meetings management practices (Meetings Today, July 17, 2006). Last year, CWT Events hosted 9,000 events for 570,000 people.

MPI Eyes Dubai For New Conference
Meeting Professionals International last month announced it would launch the first Professional Education Conference-Middle East in April 2008 in Dubai. "The Middle East came up as one of the top priority areas" during the search for the latest PEC location said Didier Scaillet, vice president of global development for MPI. "It's really going to help our members understand what it looks like and how to do business," he said. The Dubai plan is one of the first steps in the new global strategy of MPI, unveiled at last month's Professional Education Conference-Europe in Copenhagen. Tenets of the strategy include more Professional Education Conferences, more regional association offices, starting with one in Singapore, centralized Web portals, trade missions and the development of a global workshop program. The inaugural Dubai conference is expected to be financially self-sustaining.

Fairmont Launches Green Meetings Program
Fairmont Hotels and Resorts last month launched a program that seeks to lessen the damage to the environment with new amenities available for meetings and events. Dubbed the Eco-Meet program, facets of the program include the use of whiteboards rather than paper flip charts and china instead of paper plates, the installation of water-conserving showerheads and the use of locally grown organic foods wherever possible. Meeting planners also will be able to buy green tags or energy certificates to offset the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from the event. Eco-Meet is available at all Fairmont properties.