The National Business Travel Association and its recently acquired Canadian affiliate, the Canadian Alliance of Business Travel, this month held a Vancouver-based educational event and announced two dates for future CAOBT events this spring. The announcement confirmed the worst fears of Alain Legault, Canadian Business Travel Association president, who noted that CAOBT's newly announced events come in direct conflict with scheduled CBTA meetings.
Legault, who also serves as manager of travel and relocation for Nav Canada, expressed concern about the acquisition when it was first announced at the annual NBTA Convention in August.
(BTN, Aug. 16). NBTA's acquisition of the not-for-profit Canadian education and research association offered it foothold in the Canadian corporate travel market and calling into question the viability of the Paragon Partnership.
"It is not our intent to compete with CBTA, which is a viable member of the Paragon Partnership," said Hank Roeder, senior director of operations for NBTA. "Our intent is to expand the concept of managed travel and we feel we can do that best in the Canadian arena with CAOBT. We've had some serious, face-to-face discussions with Mr. Legault, so that the competitive spirit is really not present. It's a constructive and purposeful arrangement. Those discussions are on the table and are certainly ongoing." Roeder does not anticipate the subject will be discussed at next week's Paragon Partnership meeting in Barcelona. "This is not an issue," he said.
While the Paragon Partnership, signed in 2002 by international founding members including the NBTA and CBTA, "strives to create a powerful central voice for the global business travel community," according to the network's Web site, many members felt the CAOBT acquisition undermined the basic tenets of the unifying agreement. Legault initially said his organization would await possible resolution at the upcoming Paragon Partnership meeting in Spain before making further comment.
"Up to now, I've been very good, but if they've come out with something advertising their organization, then I can certainly talk about mine," Legault said.
In a statement issued on November 12, NBTA reported the success of CAOBT's second Educational Exchange Day, a one-day conference for corporate travel professionals from Western Canada sponsored by Scotiabank and the Hyatt Regency Vancouver. "This was a unique educational opportunity for Canadian travel managers, and it gave attendees a chance to earn elective credit toward the industry's only certification program, the National Business Travel Association's Certified Corporate Travel Executive," said Canadian Alliance president Tanya Racz in the release.
Legault believes that targeting the same audience with too many conference opportunities can only be detrimental to the emergent but limited Canadian corporate travel market. CBTA's Western region March event, scheduled for March 10, 2005, falls just one day after CAOBT's Inaugural Conference and Trade Show in Toronto. "In Canada, we have very little critical mass. You have small pockets of members, so it's like taking your membership from New York and having them go to a California meeting," he said.
"I think this is very unfortunate for Canada. The organization [CBTA] is much younger, not as structured, not as cash-rich as NBTA. We're playing with the same pie and cutting it into more pieces," Legault said. "I think we should work a little closer together or certainly try not to tap into the same areas with a common interest. It's our bread and butter. We're being faced with major issues and here we are, instead of trying to pool our strength, we're multiplying."
Caleb Tiller, spokesperson for NBTA reiterated that CAOBT is "a Canadian organization, for Canadians, run by Canadians," a sentiment expressed earlier this year at the NBTA convention. "The Canadian market is, I think, a really ripe market. There are ample opportunities in those arenas for those organizations to continue building on those types of events and to reach out and keep those platforms running," he said.
Despite the perceived competitive challenge, Legault said that it will be business as usual for CBTA going forward. "Whatever they do, they do. I don't minimize it, but I certainly don't plan around it. We'll do what we have to do to be successful," he said. Still, he said of the NBTA/CAOBT affiliation, "The way it was done and the intention behind it was unfortunate. That's what kills us. It's not the issue of a conference, on the contrary, it's just the reasoning behind it. Our reason for existence is to better the corporate travel platform in Canada. It's just too bad."