Prism Group Inc. of Albuquerque, N.M., last month announced the appointment of European travel management luminary Herman Mensink as vice president for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Formerly a corporate travel buyer for Philips Electronics, Mensink most recently served the Association of Corporate Travel Executives as its director of EMEA.
Beginning this month, Mensink will support Prism's development in EMEA, where 30 percent of its clients reside.
"Herman brings unmatched experience to Prism in Europe, including corporate travel management, industry education and technical information within the European Commission," said Prism president Michael Whitesage. "His role will be instrumental as Prism advances professional information management in Europe."
"Where corporate travel managers in this region are struggling, it boils down to having data available," Mensink said. "You can strip down to the traditional travel management best practice issues, managing demand and shifting marketshare, and all those issues fall into place when you have proper data. I've witnessed with European airline systems that the level of detail in terms of contract data available is not always sufficient. In addition to that, alliance building complicates the issues.
"Now that Prism has most major U.S. airlines onboard, the natural expansion is Europe," continued Mensink, an acquaintance of Whitesage's dating back about 10 years to when Philips became a Prism client.
Asked about the grumbling by some U.S.-based travel management professionals about Prism's data work with carriers in the states, Mensink said: "With the European Commission's rulings in mind, European corporates will see the value."
Business Travel News named Mensink one of the 25 Most Influential Executives in Business Travel for the year 1998
(BTN, Jan. 11, 1999). As director of worldwide corporate travel for Philips Electronics in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Mensink drove the global consolidation of the company's $400 million travel spend and facilitated the sale of Philips' own travel agency to Rosenbluth International. At that time, Mensink also served as chairman of ACTE's European Council.
According to Prism, seven of the world's 15 largest airlines use its SalesServer application, while nine of the 100 largest global companies use its Avion data suite.
The company said it "has led the development of data protection standards that now exceed EC data privacy requirements."