George Odom
Industry veteran George Odom in July returned to Advito, the
consulting arm of BCD Travel, to fill the newly created position of vice
president of integrated travel and meetings. His 35-year career in travel
sourcing and meetings management included a long tenure at Eli Lilly and Co., and,
more recently, a stint as manager of global meetings for Hewlett-Packard. He
also is a member of the Global Business Travel Association's Groups and
Meetings Committee.
Back at Advito, he's focused on leading the travel and meetings
integration practice. Such integration, he said, has been talked about for
years, "but there are very few who have actually done it."
Odom recently discussed the topic with BTN editors, touching on why meetings and travel practitioners may be
reluctant to pursue integration and how interested organizations can start the
process.
Why has there been resistance to integrating travel and meetings?
It's not an easy answer because there are a lot of different paths that go off of it. In one sense, you can say travel and meetings have been operating in parallel and not together, so you have different reporting, you have different ownership and objectives. When you start peeling back the layers, there's really a lot to it. It’s not as simple as saying, "We're going to negotiate with hotels because we use the same hotel for meetings and travel." That's an overall objective but you've got to understand that you don't select a transient hotel because it has great meetings space. It's the same thing for group air: "We'll bring in group air, manage it by the same agency and combine it." A lot of companies are now looking at this globally. Well, globally, do they have a single agency worldwide? If not, how do you get the information together? Is it just doing the reservation? How about risk mitigation? How do you know where people are going? Where are they staying? A lot of times, companies don't book their hotel through the reservation process. I know what city they're going to [for a meeting], but I don't know what hotel they're staying at. That all needs to be brought together.
What is the optimal way to approach this?
Really the most optimal way is dependent upon the hotel and the culture. You really need to understand your customer, so you're not coming in and saying "here's your answer" before you really understand what you're solving. Do they have a policy? Is it global? Do they have any kind of integration? Are you starting from scratch or are you starting someplace else? Are you progressing or are you initiating? It all depends.
How open are hotels and airlines to finding a solution to the integration question?
There are hotel chains that have addressed this. Hyatt is one. Others are still running opposite paths. There's group and transient—there's a little bit of competition and no talking internally. In some cases, the agencies aren't always set up to operate in an integrated fashion, so it's as much making sure that that's done. Our groups [at BCD Travel] talk pretty well. There are some agencies where there's not a lot of talk. You have to get your base put together so you can manage it. Then you've got to get a supplier. Hotels would be one, but then you've got airlines. Airlines don't care if it is meetings or transient. They just want people, but the problem there is whether the corporation is trying to save on group fares or trying to leverage their transient volume and bring the groups into that volume.
Internally, what are some of the best ways a company can prepare itself to start operating an integrated system?
You look at policy, you look at structure, you look at data. It's really important to get your data and your reporting, and to be able to bring that together. You look at what's important. Is it savings? It is service? Is meetings an investment or an expense? You're going to operate differently depending how you answer those questions. The first step is to understand what you're trying to solve and where you are on that path.