THE sudden announcement of Global Business Travel Association’s (GBTA) Bangkok office end last month has caught the corporate travel community by surprise.
Welf Ebeling, regional director, GBTA Asia, will remain until the end of March to help GBTA transition its activities to China, where the association has hired operations manager Maggie Wu, based in Shanghai.
The association is moving away from organising conferences to “delivering business travel education and training”, said Michael McCormick, executive director and COO, GBTA.
“It has become clear that education must be our primary focus,” he said, adding it was an area where GBTA can clearly differentiate itself.
To that end, GBTA will expand localised education programmes to high-growth markets like Singapore and India, the way it has done in China in partnership with Fudan University.
Last August, GBTA also announced the creation of the GBTA China Education Fund (Gift of Knowledge), led by United Airlines.
Reacting to the news, a regional corporate travel manager in the IT sector, who declined to be named, told TTGmice e-Weekly: “I’m disappointed GBTA is closing the Bangkok office. I thought GBTA could do something for us in Asia-Pacific. I’m also surprised that GBTA is reducing its presence because as recently as October last year, we were discussing the vision for the region and what else GBTA can do.”
“Welf (Ebeling) has done a good job and I hope GBTA will continue to offer its certification programme in Asia to benefit a new generation of corporate travel managers.”
Agreeing, another regional corporate travel manager in the banking sector commented GBTA must continue to offer its certification programme in Asia as Hong Kong-based ACTE, the other corporate travel association in the market, does not.
