Maguire Cites NBTA's Business Emphasis As Presidency Ends

The National Business Travel Association over the past two years has transformed into a global business operation as it reached record-high membership levels, expanded internationally and became an even larger force in political action for the travel industry, said NBTA president and CEO Kevin Maguire, whose term expires this month at the association's International Convention & Exposition in San Diego.

"With the economy and NBTA's changing global presence, it really needed to be run like a business, where you have a return on investment, where you are accountable to the members and suppliers," said Maguire. "You couldn't just sit there and say we had money in the bank and leave it at that. You needed to find it a way to make it a transparent operation so people on the outside looking in could see how you did things, but you had to set very specific goals and very specific five-year projections, which really hadn't been done in the past."

As Maguire, also the University of Texas travel manager for intercollegiate athletics, departs his current post, he transitions to the NBTA chairman/past president's seat on the board of directors. There, he plans to continue to focus on the association's international growth and build up new membership segments, including for university and sports travel buyers. Maguire also was instrumental in launching the association's sports travel task force, which held its first meeting in April.

During his presidency, NBTA reached a record 4,200 members.

When Maguire ran for office in 2007, his platform stressed bridging the gap between buyer and supplier members, which he said was achieved in working with the Allied Leadership Council, led by its president, Dav El Chauffeured Transportation Network president and CEO Scott Solombrino. Working together, Maguire said NBTA reformulated its educational programming, developed such new tools as the airline request-for-proposals template and the online booking tool RFP template (see story, page 10). Now, it is developing a strategic meetings management certification.

"The focus is to keep NBTA a buyer organization, but we need to remember as we plan for the future that suppliers are a very critical part of how this process works and can work," Maguire said. "They can make or break you in the future."

Maguire's presidency will be remembered for the merger effort with the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, in which he served on a negotiation team with other board members, including NBTA vice president and HSBC vice president of travel services Michael Lyons, whose term also expires this month.

"NBTA historically has been branded as the association that didn't want to merge or work together with other organizations," according to Maguire. "This has been a classic eye-opening experience for the industry to see that we are not the ones that don't want to do anything. We are the ones that want to move forward."