Travel Buyers And IT Gurus Go To TTW
<B>Travel Buyers And IT Gurus Go To TTW</B>
Travel buyers and their corporate information systems and purchasing colleagues have a golden opportunity to compare automated business travel management technology at BTN's fourth annual Travel Technology World at Chicago's Navy Pier, Oct. 3 and 4.
As before, the trade show and conference will be built around several Face- Offs In The Forum--the mainstage in the middle of the trade show floor--in which travel buyers will tell as their vendors show during hour-long comparisons of online booking, reporting and expense systems.
Headlining the meeting at the general session Wednesday morning are GDS CEOs James Barlett of Galileo, Paul Blackney of Worldspan, David Jones of Amadeus and Eric Speck, president of travel marketing and distribution for Sabre. They will discuss their visions of the future of global travel management, their Internet strategy as it pertains to the corporate travel market, the recent increase in direct GDS-corporate travel buyer relationships and how the data they manage can be used to the business travel buyer's best advantage.
In a late-breaking change to the program, the session on Purchasing Portals is being replaced by a session on Mobile Technology, aimed at helping travel managers tap into the power of on-the-road computing tools. Leading the discussion will be: Sal Provenza, vice president of enterprise sales for CAIS Internet, a company that provides high-speed ethernet connections from hotel rooms (the Chicago Hilton uses their network); Gary Amstutz, president and CEO of WalletWare, a company that developed elaborate Palm-based expense reporting for road warriors; Christopher Staal, director of corporate travel for Thomson Corp.; and moderator Robert Lichtman, former 3Com travel buyer and now consultant with the Corporate Specialist Group.
Facing Off
Business travel buyers who have implemented online booking systems by American Express, Sabre BTS, E-Travel, GetThere, TRX Technologies and Worldspan--including Adaytum Software's Marnie Brown, H-P's Dorian Stonie, Belo's Richard Wooten, Avon's Maxine Sullivan and moderator Norm Rose of TravelTechnology--will show features they find valuable and that differentiate the systems, features that needed or need to be modified and discuss issues regarding vendor support. Vendors will be on hand to show system features and answer questions.
Similar participation will come from business travel buyers who have implemented decision support systems from American Express, Hi-Mark, TRX Data Services and Sabre BTS Vantage Point, including Sheri DeVries of Microsoft and Howard Brooks of Sony Music.
Ed Ottenheimer, Office of the Inspector General, Department of the Interior, will be among the buyers of expense reporting systems, such as Captura, Concur, Extensity, Gelco and IBM, who will be led in discussion by moderator Mary Ann McNulty, editor of StarCite.
Participating in a more traditional vendor face-off will be meetings site leaders Glenn Bingham, president of AllMeetings; Peggy Lee, founder of B-There; Brian Langer, founder of Eventsource; Ed Tromczynski, president of Plansoft; and StarCite vice president Mark Phillips.
In another forum session, Intel travel buyer Bill Amaral will moderate as Karin Ruble, Toyota manager of travel services, and Dorian Stonie of Hewlett-Packard show how to build the travel platform on the corporate intranet and take it to the next level.
Other sessions focus on how to buy technology, the development of direct connections and data standards, the streamlining of the hotel request for proposals process and a workshop designed to develop an e-commerce strategy.
Special conference hotel rates will be available at The Palmer House Hilton until Sept. 11. For information, call (212) 615-2274 or access btnonline.com.