Associations Array Allied Front

The world's national travel management associations are reaching a rapprochement after years of squabbling and schism. The International Business Travel Association has joined the Paragon Agreement, an alliance that consists of the National Business Travel Association and its equivalents in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany.

In another sign of reconciliation, NBTA will become a reaffiliated member of IBTA, and the U.K.'s Institute of Travel Management quietly rejoined in July. NBTA and ITM both left the organization in the summer of 2001.

Meanwhile, IBTA this month "officially and legally" renamed itself the European Business Travel Association, said Lou Maripolski, chairman of IBTA's allied council, which represents 10 national associations.

What is not clear is how closely the Paragon partners will cooperate. "The Paragon Agreement is an informal agreement to share information and network, it has no binding structure," Maripolski said. Yet, the recent realignment of travel associations foreshadows more formal international interaction.

The agreement has set the goal of creating an international certification in business travel management and members have pledged to support each other's events. "We could stage joint international conferences or they could be co-hosted meetings," said NBTA president Kevin Iwamoto, speaking at an example of the latter, a conference co-hosted by NBTA and German association VDR in Salzburg, Austria, last month. The event, the first collaboration between the two associations, was attended by 350 delegates.

A new trend in Web fares emerged from that meeting. Alexander Schott, CIO of I:FAO, said Lufthansa is selling fares on peak-hour commuter flights only through its Web site when GDSs are indicating the flights are sold out. The implication is that Lufthansa is saving money by selling high-yield fares through the cheapest possible distribution channel on seats it can be sure of shifting. However, Schott said the Lufthansa experiment is currently only on a small scale and that most Web-only fares offered by mainstream carriers in Europe carry restrictions that make them unattractive to business travelers. "Web-only fares will become more important next year," he said.

Sam Andraos, president of Toronto-based consultancy Aim International Management, led a seminar on transaction models for international management. Andraos helped a client negotiate an identical transaction fee with the same agency across five continents. Some offices of the agency were making a profit on that fee, others were not.