Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the 2016 Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) annual convention in Denver, CO, along with my Covington colleague, Sam Keene, Senior Vice President of Business Development. GBTA is the world’s premier business travel organization, headquartered in the Washington, D.C. area with operations on six continents. GBTA’s membership is comprised of more than 7,000 travel professionals that represent every facet of the business travel industry and account for more than $345 billion of global business travel and meeting expenditures annually.

The theme for this year’s GBTA Convention was “Balance,” which aptly describes today’s business travel environment where both buyers and sellers of travel services must balance many different priorities. These concerns range from Duty of Care and Risk Management to incorporating new booking technologies to help better manage travel costs and ensure travel policy compliance.

GBTA Conference Education

This year, GBTA’s extensive educational programming offered more than 80 different educational sessions for travel professionals with all levels of experience over a 5-day period. These sessions covered a wide range of topics across the following tracks:

• Principles of Travel Management
• Data Analytics & Trends
• Technology
• Risk Management
• Procurement
• Vendor Programs (Airlines, Hotels, Ground Transportation)
• Leadership
• Sustainability Initiatives
• Strategic Meeting Management

GBTA Conference Speakers

In addition to the wealth of educational content, we had the opportunity to hear from individuals such as Mr. Oscar Munoz, President & CEO of United Airlines who spoke about the airline industry; Vice Admiral Peter Neffenger, Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) who spoke about the current challenges facing the TSA and their strategic plans to address them; Mr. Peyton Manning, the legendary NFL Quarterback who shared lessons on leadership from his years in the NFL; and Capt. Scott Kelly, the history-making U.S. Astronaut and retired U.S. Navy Captain who shared his experience with preparing for and spending a year in space, and his insights on leadership and teamwork.

Two panel discussions complemented the individual speaker presentations. They featured leading industry professionals who discussed “The Impact of Consolidation” in the travel industry and “The Future of Ground Transportation.”

GBTA Conference Exhibits

Finally, as if all of the above wasn’t enough, the GBTA Exhibit Hall & Expo allowed meeting attendees to interact with more than 400 of the leading suppliers of services and products to the travel industry, where we could see first-hand the latest innovations and advancements impacting our industry today. For first-time GBTA attendees, the Exhibit Hall & Expo can be a bit overwhelming, as it is the largest gathering of its kind for business travel industry suppliers in the world. But most meeting participants seemed to enjoy the experience as it gave us the unique opportunity to meet with all of our current (and future) suppliers during a single business trip.

In future posts, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on some of the more popular educational sessions of the GBTA Convention that I trust will be of interest to our readers, so please return to Travel Maestro to read updates in the Business & Meetings Travel category.

 

Rob Haislip is the Vice President of Business Development at Covington Travel. He has over twenty years of professional expertise in helping organizations optimize their Business Travel Management.