Not ill-fitting eye masks, anyway. This was the question handed to a group from various strands of the business travel world at the CAPA Summit in Amsterdam this week.
It’s a standard thing to ask when a sector or discipline is undergoing interesting (from a conference perspective) and radical change.
The business travel wing of the industry is indeed experiencing a fascinating period of transformation – corporate policies are challenged, clients are armed with devices and require instant gratification (read: customer service) 24/7 and, depending on who you listen to, the very essence of managed travel is under threat.
So who was on this illustrious panel and how did they answer the question in a few sentences?
(From left to right on the pic above)
Peter Bost, director international network network, ATPI
Vicky Fernandez de Larrea, senior vice president for Benelux and product marketing EMA, Carlson Wagonlit
Matthew Pancaldi, head of client management, HRG
Amon Cohen, moderator
Michael Hodgson, head of EMEA and global indirect sourcing supply chain, RBS
Toby Joseph, sales director, EasyJet
Johannes Fuhr, vice president for hotel solutions, HRS
Fergal Kelly, vice president for travel merchandising and distribution, Travelport
Such a question does trigger some obvious answers in the corporate travel world.
As the only member on the panel directly responsible for the safety of employees on managed programmes, Hodgson at RBS rightly says he has a “duty of care” through the plans he and his team have arranged is a worry, especially for staffers travelling on their own.
“You have to ask yourself sometimes if you would send your own child on a trip”, he says poignantly.
He does, however, find time to highlight where the tech world fits in with the wider discipline of corporate travel (setting the stage for other panellists).
Hodgson says there is a challenge in marrying apparent innovation appearing all across the industry with the reality of being a travel buyer.
Fuhr agrees, somewhat. He argues that technology is changing the value and process chain in business travel and, as a result, where previously having a competitor might have created barriers around collaboration, now there is a chance that other organisation might become eventually become partners.
The world of distribution at EasyJet has changed massively over recent years as the low cost carrier has eased into pushing fares, availability and booking via GDSs.
Joseph says, however, a worry for him is still how an airline with a decade or so with a back story around direct distribution can illustrate the value of its proposition within the corporate travel sector.
This type of worry chimes somewhat with both Pancaldi at HRG and Fernandez de Larrea at CWT.
HRG’s top chap overseeing its myriad of clients argues that demonstrating what he does to the wider organisation keeps him awake at night, at least in terms of how the marketplace is evolving and how the company should react to take account of new developments which might affect its ability to keep up.
Fernandez de Larre is more concise, fretting over simply “not being able to deliver service to its customers!”.
So it comes to Bost and Kelly to wrap things up.
Kelly from Travelport worries about the “Three Cs”: consumerisation, collaboration and convergence – a trio of elements having a massive impact on the business travel sector, not least as those on managed programmes act increasingly like leisure travellers in how they think about trips.
Bost, perhaps the most outspoken member of the panel, says a major concern is how the wider global financial recovery, if it exists, is something he cannot control and can only react to.
But he also argues that a significant development of how distribution might change in the years ahead is still leaving him frustrated, namely the way that “IATA is not conducting discussions with stakeholders” of its (in)famous New Distribution Capability project.
Nevertheless, as moderator Cohen says in his summing up, perhaps the better question should be: “What keeps your customers awake are night?”
NB: Panel picture courtesy of CAPA.
NB2: Disclosure – accommodation for the author’s visit to the Netherlands was supported by the Travelport.