The Association of Corporate Travel Executives board has decided to build on the past three years' positive
results by extending the term of its current president by another two years.
ACTE president Kurt Knackstedt’s term was up at the end of
this year, but the ACTE board decided to forego an election and keep the
leadership structure in place. “That’s exciting,” executive director Greeley
Koch said. “He has the buyer-side and the supplier-side experience, as well as
a global view after living in Asia and now located in Australia. He’s the
perfect president for us right now.”
Koch’s contract also is coming due, and he’s in discussions
with the board. “I feel like I am not done yet. I came in not knowing exactly
where we were but understanding we have to fix this,” Koch said about both ACTE’s
tenuous financial situation when he took the helm in 2012 and what some
perceived as a drift in member engagement. There is evidence that Koch's
efforts are turning things around. “We are looking at being able to report soon
three years of positive net income,” he said, pointing to the association’s 75
events in 24 countries that have yielded positive financial numbers. “This will
allow us to make some investments in technology and back office and other
things that we’ve been wanting to do.”
To that end, he said, ACTE is set for a full technology
audit “to review all of our systems and how to better communicate with and
engage our members beyond the conferences.” He added that content availability
would be a priority. “We have been able to do the ACTE TV with Jens Bischof of
Lufthansa to talk about the [distribution cost charge] and stream video from
our conferences.”
Koch underscored that ACTE is poised to invest more. “This
has been a year of moving from let’s stabilize the ship to let’s move it
forward and let’s grow. We got leaner, but we have a great team around the
world that is producing some tremendous results for our members. “So to me,
it’s been a good year,” he said.
Combo Conference With
CAPA
ACTE also announced it and aviation association CAPA will
host a co-located conference in Amsterdam next October. “We want to combine
their audience of airline CEOs and senior executives with corporate travel buyers,”
Koch said. “In bringing those two groups together, we want to remove some of
the filters [and ensure] that what corporate travel buyers want goes directly
to the C-level. Working with them is going to be very powerful. We’ll actually
overlay the conferences and have some joint plenary and educational sessions,
as well as separate ones.”