NBTA Launches Mexican Organization
The National Business Travel Association has launched NBTA-Mexico, an organization led by Mexico-based corporate travel buyers and leaders of the NBTA parent association.
Like its parent and sister associations, NBTA-Mexico is a buyer-led organization focused on gaining membership of not only buyers and suppliers from multinational corporations with offices in Mexico, but also Mexico-based companies.
"We were overwhelmed by the enthusiasm. We hadn't even left Mexico City and they already had the ball rolling," said NBTA president and CEO Suzanne Fletcher, referring to NBTA's conference in Mexico City last January. "After the event, we were approached by three or four local people and they said, 'We want an office here.' I have to give the Mexicans credit for really driving this bus. They got the attorney, they got working on this, they identified the players and they really jumped on board."
The association's board includes NBTA executive director and COO Bill Connors and Fletcher, until her presidency ends this week. Representing suppliers is BCD Travel country general manger Vince Garcia, who is the president of the NBTA-Mexico Allied Advisory Council.
Veronica Crespo, Americas travel agency and technology manager for Hewlett-Packard, is serving as president of the NBTA-Mexico Direct Advisory Council.
Crespo said the fledgling association plans to educate Mexico-based buyers on how to handle travel programs within the local market, demonstrate the value of travel buyers within the country and build relationships between buyers and suppliers.
"This is a very new topic in Mexico," she said. "There are people who are working in travel activities as part of corporations, but they don't have a real understanding of the corporate travel culture. Today, the focus of the association is to create cooperation between organizations, corporations and the people who are participating in the business travel industry. We want to help corporations and individuals to carry out their business and strategic plans and to have productive, effective travel management."
The association, which recently received Mexican government approval to start the organization, plans to have an initial member base of buyers from foreign-based companies, according to Crespo. Along with the annual NBTA-Mexico Annual Conference in Mexico City, where the association is based, she said, there are plans to hold quarterly educational forums designed for the local market, such as addressing the recent entry of low-cost carriers.
"This is something really new for us. Travel agencies and online booking tools are not ready to work with them," she said "The conditions between the U.S., Europe, Asia and Mexico are quite different. The technology, the resources that we find here are totally different than what we find in the U.S."
Meanwhile, in her role at Hewlett-Packard, Crespo is reducing the number of HP preferred hotels and other vendors and standardizing policy and online booking tools as part of the company's global travel consolidation, which includes. Like in the United States, HP in Mexico recently switched from GetThere to Cliqbook self-booking tools, which, according to Crespo, makes her program one of the first Cliqbook users in the market.
According to Crespo, HP has an 80 percent online adoption rate in the United States and she plans to have a 50 percent adoption rate within the next year in Latin America, which encompasses about 3,500 travelers in 10 countries.