Pam Keenan Fritz
Expedia's Egencia corporate travel this month announced a new global division to help companies plan, source, execute, strategize and report meetings, events and incentives. Building on the meetings management expertise it acquired last June in Reward Worldwide, a Toronto meetings and incentives agency purchased in conjunction with Synergi Global Travel Management, Egencia North America Meetings & Incentives now has a 20-person team in Toronto and Bellevue, Wash., with support from other professionals. A dedicated meetings and incentives team already has been operating in Europe, and Egencia is adding another dedicated team in Asia-Pacific, newly named Egencia North America senior vice president Pam Keenan Fritz told The Transnational. The offering includes expertise and resources, as well as technology to automate bookings and deliver reporting.
What is this new division selling: technology, services or some combination?
We've had a meetings business for several years now. Last year, we acquired the Reward Worldwide meetings business in Canada, a highly successful, very well-recognized, full-service, high touch, meetings business that does small meetings, large meetings, events and incentives--so it really does cover the full gamut of what clients are looking for in the meetings space. What we've been doing over the past 12 months is looking at the meetings space and asking, "What can we bring to the table?" We're investing very heavily in the more traditional approach--the high-end, high-touch teams who have a lot of experience and can be dedicated partners to our clients. But the other part of what we've been doing is really listening to our clients. Some of the smaller meetings, our clients really do in-house and they've been asking for help making managing those easier. Also, they need help linking not only the corporate policy that exists for business travel to meetings--making sure it's consistent across the board--but knowing how much they spend on meetings on an annual basis so they can add that into their negotiations when they talk with suppliers around their total corporate spend, including meetings and incentives. It's basically giving them a real view of a consolidated spend look.
What technology is being offered?
Say you're hosting a meeting for 10 to 20 people: You have a lot of other things to do, so, ideally, you'd like them to self-serve. Tell them where, get them to book their own travel, but to know who's booked, who hasn't and the parameters around that. The technology allows clients to say, "I have a meeting for 20 people; I'd like people to arrive on this day, depart on this day and this is my corporate policy," [and have that] automatically loaded. You set the parameters around what they can book, the policy and the hotel they'll be staying at. The technology allows you to send out a meeting notice with all that information and ask them to book. As they do, you can see that 13 out of 15 people have booked. This one is out of policy. If you want additional meeting services on top of that, of course we have this fabulous team that can add on any requirements.
You describe this as the first "single-source solution." What does this mean?
Right now, all the resources for meetings are fragments. If you're a meeting planner, you likely are working with a separate registration tool, possibly a separate booking platform, possibly a separate person for air sourcing and maybe even a separate meeting planner. When we put this offering together, really it was about making it much easier for our corporate clients to combine all that together--so they have a single contact. We just thought that was important, especially as meetings and incentives is the next focus for the corporate travel industry to start to rein in and add a little more policy, strategic insight and reporting.
In what geographic areas are you planning on supporting meetings, and how's business in this economy?
We've already booked meetings and incentives for 2010 and 2011 in the United States and Canada. Our tools are really available across our global range of countries and offerings. While 2009 has been a slower year for meetings, we're seeing a lot of pickup for 2010 and 2011, with corporations taking advantage of the lower base, particularly on the hotel rates, to cement those now and really start booking for the future. As ever, people are conscious about what a large meeting costs, what an incentive meeting costs. Yet, at the end of day, they want the right experience and the right business result from it, whether that is sales people raring to go from a sales incentive or bringing together executives to decide the right strategic direction for the corporation.
Do you see the potential for Egencia Meetings & Incentives to grow as large as your corporate travel business?
I see no reason why it shouldn't. A lot of our clients spend as much on the meetings and incentive side as they do on the corporate travel side. This isn't a one-off investment for us. We already have ideas about how we want to move forward and improve our offering, including increasing our sales force. You'll see further announcements on the meetings and incentives side this year, and it's very much a strategic investment for us for the long term.