Flight Centre Travel Group has tasked FCM with the revitalisation and relaunch of the FCM Meetings & Events subdivision globally, with the order accompanied by a kick-start fund of A$20 million (US$13.5 million).
Simone Seiler, global general manager of FCM Meetings & Events at Flight Centre Travel Group, told TTGmice that this decision came off the back of a “really exciting journey over the last couple of years”, as pandemic woes tapered off and demand for meetings and events as well as appetite for flights returned.
The relaunch of FCM Meetings & Events was unveiled towards the end of the FCM Singapore Summit yesterday, a full-day conference at Raffles Hotel Singapore where sessions dissected the role and impact of AI on the business travel industry.
Seiler said: “Our globalisation journey is around our people and structure, and is about building our operating model and the integration of technology between the meetings and events products and services and the FCM technology suite.”
She described meetings and events as “a tale of two cities”, where on one side lies “personal and emotive experiences” and on the other side the focus on “procurement, consolidation, data and process, efficiency, visibility, transparency, and compliance”.
“We call it the left and right brain, and we want to bring both aspects together and show our clients how we add value through our people, experience and technology,” Seiler added.
While technology utilisation would be a big part of FCM Meetings & Events’ new journey forward, Seiler said innovation would not come at the cost of personalisation and the human touch.
Seiler pointed to the FCM Venue Finder as one of the tools newly offered to improve the customer experience. Launched in April this year, the FCM Venue Finder is an online booking tool that allows clients to source venues for themselves. Produced in partnership with Hubli, the FCM Venue Finder is equipped with powerful filters and intuitive search, and lists over 250,000 venues of all types and sizes across the world. Bookers can communicate directly with the venue via the tool.
“This tool is for meeting planners, executive assistants and personal assistants who enjoy the process of sourcing for and planning meetings; it gives them control over the process while satisfying the reporting and visibility needs of the procurement and finance teams,” she said, adding that FCM Venue Finder would be especially useful for smaller-scale meetings and events without complex arrangements.
Coming up soon by June 2025, FCM Meetings & Events will unveil the Global AI Reporting Suite, a “key project” for the business unit. This Suite will integrate corporate and meeting and event data onto a single FCM platform.
In terms of target markets, the revitalised FCM Meetings & Events will pursue existing and prospective FCM clients.
“FCM Meetings & Events is in 17 countries across four regions today. It obviously does not have as large a footprint as FCM. So, we will be looking to expand FCM Meetings & Events in the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) region and Asia,” she shared.
Here, her plan is to work more closely with the company’s partner network in countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand – areas where FCM is not represented at the moment.
She said: “Today, in Asia, we exist operationally only in Singapore, India, China and Japan. We hub out of these offices. The Singapore office, for example, is a hub for many parts of South-east Asia.”
Seiler expressed enthusiasm for the “strong three- to five-year plans and goals” that FCM Meetings & Events would be working towards.
