Getting Back to Business Travel, Tourism, and MICE: It’s a Wrap for PATA-GBTA APAC Travel Summit!
Wrapping up the year on a high-note, our first ever APAC Travel Summit in collaboration with Global Business Travel Association successfully concluded on Dec 9, 2022 with support from Diamond Sponsor, Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau (TCEB); Main Stage Sponsor, FCM Travel; Silver Sponsors, American Airlines and Gangneung City; Registration Area Sponsor, Cvent, and Featured Sponsors, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), Amadeus, BCD, CWT, and Marriott International.
The two-day event featured six breakout sessions, four main stage sessions, and four tradeshow sessions; bringing 222 delegates from 85 organisations and 15 destinations to the new, state-of-the-art Queen Sirikit National Convention Center (QSNCC) in Bangkok, Thailand to convene on four topics: Recovery & Opportunities, Recovery with Sustainability, Challenges and Opportunities in Duty of Care, and The Future of Travel in Asia Pacific. The event featured keynote speakers Prof. Kishore Mahbubani (diplomat, Asia geopolitical analyst, author and former dean), Darrell Wade (Founder of Intrepid and Chairman of Travalyst), and Jeffrey Goh (CEO of Star Alliance).
During the closing of the event, Ms Neufang and Ms Ortiguera provided a wrap up of the two-day event and announced the plans for the next PATA & GBTA APAC Travel Summit in Singapore in September 2023. If you are interested in attending the event and would like to receive updates, please add your name to this form: PATA-GBTA APAC Travel Summit 2023 Singapore Expression of Interest.
Take a sneak peek at the key takeaways from PATA-GBTA APAC Travel Summit below. PATA Members and event delegates are entitled to access all video recordings and decks as permitted by the guest speakers. To receive access to the content please contact Monica P. at Events@PATA.org.
Liz Ortiguera, CEO, PATA
Welcome by GBTA
Suzanne Neufang, CEO, GBTA
Presentation by TCEB
Chiruit Isarangkun Na Ayuthaya, President, Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau (TCEB)
Overview of the Asia Pacific’s Leisure, Business, and Blended Travel Trends
Asia Pacific might be a bit slow in recovery compared to the other regions, but it will become the future. A few trends seen in the region:
Rise of Conscious travellers along with a heightened focus on wellness, authenticity, and sense of place in travel
Rise of Conscious Communities and Destinations
Event-led recovery for several markets in Asia Pacific
Extended and blended trips driver by multiple factors
Asia Pacific is leading the world as it gets bigger shares in both corporate and leisure travel, reaching 66% of pre-COVID levels in 2022 and catching up with the other regions in 2026.
Sustainability is the core principle now for developing Thailand’s MICE industry. Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau’s role is to deliver the world’s sustainability agenda on behalf of the nation.
- Suzanne Neufang, CEO, GBTA
- Darrell Wade, Chairman, Travalyst; Co-founder & Chairman, Intrepid Travel
Bart Bellers, Founder and CEO, Xpdite Capital Partners
Travel & The Law of Attraction
Ben Wedlock, Senior Vice President, Sales, Asia Pacific, BCD Travel
Main Stage: Recovery and Opportunities: The State of Travel, Tourism and MICE
Sustainability, talents, and digitalisation are three key opportunities in the Asia Pacific to recover and progress.
Sustainability should not be a competition. The industry needs to sync up and unify the information, making the options simpler and more easily understandable to have the consumers willingly onboard.
Rise of blended travel and remote work indicates that consumers’ monitoring travel footprints matter more than ever, meanwhile, TMC’s duty of care now goes beyond knowing where your travellers are going.
The industry needs to build creative images and create sense of community across platforms to draw attention to new generations and non-traditional talents.
The Sustainable Future of Asia
Remarkable shift of power is taking place. ASEAN is rising in level of influence, providing platforms for bigger powers to have peaceful communications while exporting their culture to the world.
The travel industry will continue to thrive as the tidal wave of change resulted in the blooming middle class in Asia (75M in 2000, 1.1B in 2020, to 2B+ in 2030). Growth in the next 1-2 decades will come from the new CIA (China, India, ASEAN).
COP27 Sustainability Compensation Promises: Developing countries need to be more realistic and self-reliant as it is hard for the developed countries to be generous when they have internal issues to deal with.
- Siew Kim Beh, CFSO, Lodging, CapitaLand Investment; MD , The Ascott Limited
- Sanghamitra Bose,Vice President & General Manager- Singapore, HKSAR, Thailand, AmexGBT
- Eric Ricaurte, Founder and CEO, Greenview
- Andrea Giuricin, CEO, TRA consulting SL
Siew Kim Beh, CFSO, Lodging, CapitaLand Investment; MD , The Ascott Limited
Sustainability in Hospitality
Eric Ricaurte, Founder and CEO, Greenview
Main Stage: Recovery with Sustainability
Sustainability is collaborative work- net zero is the sum of its parts, it is therefore important to understand the ecosystem of travel for corporate travels to magnify their impacts on sustainability efforts.
From Value of Green to Return On Sustainability, from Green Premium (additional costs for going green) to Brown Discount (discount on service evaluation if don’t go green): More investors than ever want and ESG approach in their invested companies.
By seeking for sustainable options, business travels are gaining momentum in hotels’ actions for decarbonising. Look for hotels running on 100% renewable electricity and GSTC certified options .
Demand need to be created to drive the production of sustainable products; carbon tax should also come into play to accelerate this transition.
Trends and Insights into Aviation
Global capacity has recovered to approximately 84% of pre-COVID levels, and APAC’s international capacity has recovered to 67% of that in 2019. The aviation sector now has 3 key focuses:
Cyber security: Deeper industry collaboration needed to be more intelligently prepared for increased risks
Digitalisation and infrastructure investment: The industry needs to address the staffing gap through investments in new processes and systems to maintain seamless customer experience.
Environmental sustainability: Initiatives need to be more proactive, objective, and transparent. The industry also needs better coordination in regulations, engagements of all stakeholders in the ecosystem, and avoidance of politicising critical topics.
- Bertrand Saillet, Managing Director, Asia, FCM Travel
- Lee Whiteing, Commercial Director, Global Secure Accreditation
- Richard Hancock, APAC Director, Crisis24
- Liz Ortiguera, CEO, Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA)
Lee Whiteing, Commercial Director, Global Secure Accreditation
Duty of Care
Dylan Wilkinson General Manager International & Global Partnerships, nib Travel
Main Stage: Challenges and Opportunities in Duty of Care
Trends in the industry will inevitably change the way duty of care needs to be operated. It is essential that organisations have renewed understandings on their roles in the travel landscape.
Risk treatment options should be proportionate to the level of risk foreseen or expected; evaluate, with inclusion of health and external factors, whether the trip is worthwhile. ISO 310310 is the benchmark to help replace assumption with assessments and assurances.
Dealing with complex policies in APAC: TMCs need to have higher involvements with their customers. Build a framework within operations for travel managers to flexibly apply and be supportive of the decision-maker.
Changing duty of care expectations: All parts of the supply chain must be a part of the conversation and TMCs need to expand their research to more local destinations to deal with the rise of blended travel and awareness of risk mitigation importance.
- Rizki Handayani, Deputy Minister for Tourism and Product (Events), Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy, Indonesia
- Paul Pruangkarn, Chief of Staff, PATA
Liz Ortiguera, CEO, PATA
Forecasting the Future of Travel
- Melissa Gan, CCO, WorldHotels AG
- Sandeep Shastri, Senior Director Southeast Asia, Sabre Asia Pacific Pte Ltd.
- Fenady Uriarte, Business Development Manager, Southeast Asia, STR
- Andrew Chan, Founder & CEO, ACI HR Solutions
Main Stage: The Future of Travel in Asia Pacific
The changing traveller behaviours and tweaked recovery created new opportunities for travel destinations to embrace.
Blended travel: Blended travel seekers are higher-spender, digital savvy, and more senior. With more variations expanded and enabled, a wider secondary market (e.g. new MICE markets, short-term rentals) opens up, and hospitality providers’ customer base will be broadened- less seasonality and more flexibility in a part of the traditionally "unable" markets.
Rising hotel and air rates: The elevation will dip to normal once the new inventory is added into the market and the industry has fully reintroduced energy back into the scene. Note that the average hotel rate now is still lower than pre-pandemic.
China reopening: Now is the time to maximise the opportunities- generating hypotheses using the other destinations’ data. Once they reopen, the real challenge will be on hotels’ ability to sustain occupancy with restricted resources.
Indonesia is now seeing increased long-haul travellers from the US and Russia that are also staying longer. The destination is grasping this transformative time to develop wellness tourism, create new products in developed touristic areas, and form closer collaboration with international and regional associations.
Breakout 1: 8 Trends shaping travel management trends
- Paul Tilstone, Managing Partner, Festive Road
- Mike Orchard, Principle Consultant, Festive Road
- Kenji Soh, Director APAC Travel, Bain & Company
- Tanya Pirapokin, Executive Director, FCM Thailand
Travel managers need to become a connector between companies and supply chain as dispersed workforce shift businesses from global to regional/local focus
ESG sees emphasised importance on S(ociety) and G(overnance). Organisations need to take a proactive stance about the needs of people, the planet, and the profit.
The whole trip experience is the new duty of care. Travel Managers and TMCs need to take care of the entire travel process to ease the stress on travellers to deliver the expected protection.
Breakout 2: The Future of Online Booking Tools
- Ingrid Picard, Head of Commercial APAC, Amadeus
- Sanghamitra Bose, VP & GM, Singapore, HKSAR and Thailand, Amex Global Business Travel
Over the past years the way people work has changed, but corporate travel tools have not changed much; there has never been a better time to reimagine the future of work. The future of OBTs should:
Be able to share feedback with suppliers live and provide touchless travel experience for travellers
To integrate tools to reduce carbon emissions upfront, and transform to paperless processes
Integrate pay and duty care solutions through strong technology partners
Breakout 3: Understand Sustainable Travel & Avoid Pitfalls
- Ben Wedlock, Senior Vice President, Sales, Asia Pacific, BCD Travel
- Milena Jankovic, Director of Strategic Sales APAC, Enterprise Holdings
- Chandrashekhar Vispute, Regional Travel Manager and Immigrations, Amdocs Development Center India, LLP
Can Companies be carbon neutral? Carbon neutrality is a long-term goal that can only be achieved through drastically reducing our emissions first. It can only be achieved at a global level, not by individual companies.
Will offsetting cancel out my travel-related emissions? Only 15% of offsetting projects result in actual emissions decrease. It would take trees 25-35 years to absorb the carbon from a single flight from NY to London, thus, decreasing emissions is the most important thing we can do.
Breakout 4: Addressing the Staffing Gap
- Andrew Chan, Founder & CEO, ACI HR Solutions
- Dr. Praweena Kasai, Vice Rector, Student Affairs, Dusit Thani College
- Chirodeep Chakraborty, Regional Director of Sales - Asia, Minor Hotels
- Paul Pruangkarn, Chief of Staff, PATA
The industry needs to be forward-looking at what we want in the next 30 years rather than what we need at this moment. Need to start transition into a digital industry and re-examine if the payout and learnings are good enough to match the current talent pool’s qualifications and needs.
Working From Home (WFH) does not have to be the new norm. Working with senior peers is the benefit of hospitality, and youths want to work in office for the mentorship that will help them in developing their careers.
Breakout 5: Why Your Travel Programme Isn’t Sustainable
- Dr Carl Jones, Managing Director, Southeast Asia, SAP Concur
- John Timson, Vice President - Sustainability and Safety, SE Asia, Japan and Korea, Accor
- Andy Winchester, APAC Travel Manager, Bloomberg LP
- Sandeep Shastri, Senior Director Southeast Asia, Sabre Asia Pacific Pte Ltd.
Build a sustainable travel programme through three stages:
Relationship with suppliers: Choose certified suppliers that are committed to their sustainability programmes and strategies. Be in continuous conversations with the suppliers and be patient in seeing the changes take place as this is an ongoing journey.
Tracking and analytics: It is important to have more meaningful data and staff education to ensure that space for improvement and positive progresses are being seen.
Stakeholder engagement: Organisations’ sustainable strategies need to be transparent with visible communications to help consumers make the right choices.
Breakout 6: 2023 Travel Forecast for Corporate Travel Programmes
- Wayne Koh, Head of Global Sales, Asia Pacific, CWT
- Ingrid Picard, Head of Commercial APAC, Amadeus
- Kieran Tempest, Senior Manager, APAC Operations Travel & Meetings, Global Procurement, GSK
- Suzanne Neufang, CEO, GBTA
Prices and budgets: While hotels are predicted to see a 6% growth in price, airlines are expected to increase their frequency and expand network that leads to 56.4% lower increase in price. Organisations should make the trip more valuable through integrating different components to one trip.
Sustainability: Suppliers need to be more detailed and accurate in the values provided in their sustainable options and think from the cost of doing nothing instead of the cost of doing something.
Impactful investments for 2023: It is time to invest in innovations that are new to the industry rather than just improving what is already available on the market.
The event’s topical agenda brought together two major spheres of the travel and tourism industry- business and leisure to convene on trends, challenges, and the future. The 37 speakers shared their valuable insights with the audience and shed light on the emerging trend of blended travel.
Thank you to event sponsors, partners and delegates that made this event possible. We wish to see you all at our future events! Check out event photos here >
PATA Members, GBTA Members, and event delegates are entitled to access all video recordings and decks as permitted by the guest speakers. To receive access to the content please contact Monica P. at Events@PATA.org.
