FCM Travel Solutions has made a minority investment in Shep, a browser extension technology that assists companies with better management of travel purchased outside of corporate travel policies.
By monitoring activity on more than 70 consumer travel sites, Shep’s technology will help companies improve savings, compliance and safety. In addition to tracking, Shep’s advanced browser extension approach can also enforce policy at point of sale and link to client analytics and duty of care programmes.
A screenshot from the Shep website
FCM plans to incorporate Shep’s technology into the next generation of its platform offering, joining similar investments and acquisitions made by companies such as Sam :], FCM’s 24-hour personal travel assistant on mobile; and 30SecondsToFly with its AI-powered chat booking platform.
John Morhous, CEO of FCM, said in a statement: “We’re excited to leverage some of this technology into our platforms, as we feel the browser extension is a simple and elegant solution to a problem many of our customers face, which is gaining visibility overspend on travel that happens outside of the managed programmes they provide.”
According to PhocusWire, Shep was founded in 2016, and counts Capital Factory, Moonshots Capital, Plug and Play and former Travelocity Business president Ellen Keszler among its investors.
American Society of Association Executives’s (ASAE) president and CEO John H Graham has passed away after an extended battle with cancer.
Graham was a transformative leader for ASAE and a mentor to many in the association community. During his tenure, which began August 1, 2003, ASAE more than doubled its membership and developed a wealth of innovative products and services to benefit association professionals and their partners.
John H Graham
Before ASAE, Graham served the American Diabetes Association (ADA) in Alexandria, Virginia, for 24 years, the last 13 as CEO. During his tenure as CEO, ADA quadrupled in size, from US$50 million to US$200 million in annual revenues and successfully moved from 53 independent, separately incorporated affiliate organisations to one nationwide organization with one staff, one budget and one plan.
Before joining ADA, Graham served the Boy Scouts of America for nine years. In May 2015, he was recognised by the Boy Scouts of America as a Distinguished Eagle Scout.
Graham also served on the Association Committee of 100, US Chamber of Commerce; as chairman of the Mobile Giving Foundation board of directors; on the board of directors of the Lambda Chi Alpha Foundation; and as president of the National Capital Area Council, Boy Scouts of America.
The Graham family will hold a private service for him in Pennsylvania, and a memorial service in Washington, DC, will follow.
With Graham’s passing, the ASAE Board has announced that Susan Robertson will continue to serve as interim president and CEO of ASAE.
CWT, the B2B4E travel management platform, has named Dale Eastlund vice president, supply chain partners.
A 20-year veteran of CWT, Eastlund oversees CWT’s strategy and commercial relationships with supply chain partners. He reports to Vincent Chirico, senior vice president, global supply chain partners.
In his new role, Eastlund and his team will work closely with online booking tools (OBTs) and other third-party platforms to further enhance the online booking experience for travellers and travel managers.
Prior to his new role, Eastlund laid the groundwork for CWT’s strategy to effectively respond to the challenges and opportunities of the airline industry’s New Distribution Capability (NDC), in his role as senior director for third party aggregators and, prior to that, senior director for online booking tools.
He was also instrumental in setting up CWT’s Solutions Group, the data analytics and consulting arm of CWT, in January 2000, and led CWT Solutions Group for the Americas. Eastlund also spent four years with CWT’s Customer Organization team where he successfully managed the company’s largest commercial account.
Four Points by Sheraton Kuala Lumpur, Chinatown, has opened in the Malaysian capital, making it the third Four Points in the country.
There are 318 rooms available, of which 18 are suites while 76 are inter-connecting rooms. Each room features customised wall art by Malaysian artists Loka Made that portrays the stories of the livelihood, craft and trade of the neighbourhood it stands in.
Four Points by Sheraton Kuala Lumpur, Chinatown
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There are three F&B venues for guests to choose from – Quan’s Kitchen, the all-day restaurant with an open theatrical kitchen; Jann, the chinoiserie-styled bar; and Lady Yi’s Tea House, the lobby lounge on the seventh floor. On the seventh floor are a fitness centre and outdoor splash pool.
Four Points by Sheraton Kuala Lumpur, Chinatown, is located a short walk to the Pasar Seni MRT (Mass Rapid Transport) and LRT (Light Rail Transit) stations.
John Drummond has been promoted to general manager of InterContinental Grand Stanford Hong Kong.
He was previously the hotel’s resident manager, a post he has been in since 2010. Drummond first joined InterContinental Grand Stanford Hong Kong in 2004 as executive chef and was promoted to director of F&B in 2006.
The Scot’s hospitality experience spans 20 years across three continents – Asia, Australia and the Middle East. During this career, Drummond has been the executive chef and developed F&B concepts for hotels such as Shangri-La Taipei, Hayman Island Resort Australia, and InterContinental Bahrain.
A whisky aficionado, Drummond is also the whisky ambassador of the hotel. He is the founder of the first-ever Hong Kong Whisky Festival, which is famed as the largest whisky event in Hong Kong. The event, celebrating its fifth edition, features over 1,100 different whisky expressions from around the globe, alongside an array of over 30 masterclasses.
Tasmania is another Australian destination that is safe; Mount Wellington Lookout structure overlooking the city of Hobart, Tasmania
Misrepresentation of the bushfire crisis by international media has hurt Australian tourism
Many popular tourist destinations unaffected, visitors encouraged to stick to travel plans upon doing due diligence
Economic impact drastic in destinations across the country
Unaffected destinations such as the Blue Mountains (Three Sisters rock formation pictured) have registered a 60 per cent decrease in visitors
Australian tour operators are fighting the perception that the country is unsafe for visitors and that much of its naturally beautiful environment has been destroyed.
Tourism Australia’s office and industry commentators have been inundated with calls from all over the world, fielding questions about the extent of the damage caused by one of the worst bushfires the country has seen and its impact on tourism.
“I was interviewed by (an international broadcast network), who seemed to be under the impression that Australia was burnt to a cinder, and that we wouldn’t bounce back for 30 years,” said David Beirman, senior lecturer in tourism at University of Technology Sydney.
“I’m glad I was able to correct some of those ridiculous assumptions… but that’s the kind of negative stuff that’s coming out from some of the less informed sections of the international media.”
Australia’s tourism bodies insist many popular tourist destinations are unaffected and remain open to visitors, urging that it’s now more important than ever to stick to travel plans and support the industry, worth A$143 billion (US$98.8 billion).
“We are still gathering feedback from the industry and monitoring impacts on future bookings closely as the situation unfolds,” said Tourism Australia’s managing director Phillipa Harrison.
“As we have seen from past severe weather events and natural disasters, tourism is an extremely resilient sector. When affected communities are ready to once again welcome visitors, tourism will continue to play an important role in supporting their recovery,” she continued.
Tourism Australia says at present, Brisbane, Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, much of Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory are considered safe to visit. All international airports have also remained open, including those in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, despite many eastern cities experiencing smokey and sometimes apocalyptically red skies.
Business tourism impact
So far, business events tourism appears largely unaffected. An anecdotal poll revealed while there have been a good number of concerned enquiries, actual cancellations have been few.
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, which turned into a transition and relief centre for more than 200 bushfire victims, reported no impact on business. So has Melbourne Convention Bureau and Business Events Sydney, noting that the summer holidays are usually quieter periods for global meetings anyway.
In fact, there’s been some show of support. “With those enquiries, we have been heartened at the genuine warmth towards Australia and concern for our welfare,” said BESydney CEO’s Lyn Lewis-Smith.
“Some – like the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine who are bringing their 28th Annual Meeting & Exhibition here in April – are leading on the front, providing advice to delegates on how they can best demonstrate their support,” she said.
Tasmania is another Australian destination that is safe; Mount Wellington Lookout structure overlooking the city of Hobart pictured
Damage control
However, there’s no denying some incredible damage has been done. More than 10 million hectares of land have been burnt, including almost half of South Australia’s Kangaroo Island where about 25,000 koalas didn’t survive. Some areas in New South Wales’ Blue Mountains are being described as a ghost town, with up to 60 per cent loss in visitors while some tourism operators in Victoria’s Gippsland are seeing a 90 per cent business decrease, despite most tourism areas being untouched by the fires.
“These fires have come at the peak of our season, particularly for the domestic market,” said Terry Robinson, CEO of Destination Gippsland, who estimates economic damage in Gippsland to be in the “tens of millions of dollars”.
“There’s no doubt the media coverage and the genuine safety warnings and emergency messages have had an impact and rightly so. (But) it probably couldn’t have come at a worse time in terms of the travel season. So we’re working hard to look at how we can restore visitation as soon as it’s safe and possible to do so,” he said.
Global considerations
The international media coverage threatens to undo years of careful investment Tourism Australia has poured into promoting Australia’s attributes overseas as it tackles the crisis running on its feet. In Britain, Tourism Australia was forced to suspend its new three-minute commercial where the advertising of summer beach holidays fronted by Kylie Minogue was criticised for poor timing against rolling news images of burnt forests, exhausted firefighters and terrified animals.
Beirman believes Australia will also experience a temporary decline in Chinese visitation during the Lunar New Year although numbers may be tempered by the many visitors who travel to see relatives studying and living in Australia.
“But a very critical question is that with the new Tourism Australia ‘Philausophy’ campaign, which had a lot of focus on our clear skies, unpolluted environment, clean and green image… Well, everything that’s been happening over the last few months has actually contradicted that image. So I guess if you’re from Shanghai and want to escape the pollution there, you’re not going to be doing it by coming to Sydney or Melbourne, at least not right at this point in time,” he opined.
International visitors who are seeking regularly updated information on top destinations detailing impacted areas, as well as visitor safety information, click here.
We have just started a brand new year, exchanging customary greetings of hope and optimism with colleagues and loved ones. Given the economic uncertainty, however, some projections on the business front may not be as rosy as last year’s.
With little doubt, organisations across Asia-Pacific will come under pressure to do more with less. That means business and finance leaders will need to look at streamlining operations and raising efficiency.
Watson believes technology will play a much bigger role this year
Technology can play a big role here – artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and deep data analytics all have the potential to deliver greater productivity and intelligence to operations without growth in headcount.
Some of these technologies can also augment employee experience. That’s important because happy employees do a better job, benefiting business outcomes.
AI gets empathetic, and ML goes everywhere
For example, AI can automate routine and often tedious tasks. Early deployments are already showing that employees are more satisfied using AI to sort and forward emails, proofread documents, schedule meetings and build custom workflows.
The next wave of AI, which I expect to start gaining traction in 2020, is empathetic AI. Here, emotional intelligence is injected into AI, personalising interactions and making the subject of the interactions feel important, listened to or respected.
If your customers and employees feel heard and understood, your firm has an advantage. The powerful thing about empathetic AI is that it can deliver unique, customised experiences to a virtually unlimited number of individuals.
ML, in a similar vein, will take a step up. It will proliferate under the hood of technology services everywhere, especially behind everyday workflows and forms. That means business services will increasingly anticipate your needs quickly and accurately – be they related to expense reports, scheduling or other processes.
Actual ML applications that SAP Concur is developing includes having an employee’s preferred travel itinerary suggested and filled out based on previous trips, and automatically combined with the company’s preferred vendor commitments. Location of expenses can be predicted based on the cities employees visited, speeding up expense report filing and giving time back to staff for strategic or creative work.
I believe that in 2020, workplace technology will also become more adept at providing consumer app grade experiences, and more firms will use this to their employee engagement advantage. That means more workers will have access to travel, expense, healthcare and other services via mobile apps.
In such a scenario, enterprise travel booking tools can be as easily usable as consumer travel apps without a company forgoing the discounts, control and real-time visibility it has into the choices that employees are making. This is a timely development, as APAC airline and hotel prices are expected to climb about 3% in 2020, according to BCD Travel’s 2020 Industry Forecast, and companies will want to have the appropriate corporate travel systems in place to secure the best deals.
A safe employee is a happy employee
Another aspect of employee experience is traveller safety – organisations need to do more to protect their staff when they are making their business trips.
A recent study commissioned by SAP Concur found that personal safety is a top concern for APAC business travellers. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of business travellers in the region have changed their accommodation specifically because they have felt unsafe, and about half (46%) have reduced travel to a certain location due to political unrest or health hazards. Business travellers from Singapore and Malaysia are the most wary of uncertainty, with 60% curtailing travels plans, followed by Australia (53%) and India (50%).
Female travellers are particularly concerned about safety. Seventy-six per cent of the APAC women surveyed have faced gender-based negative experiences while on a business trip, and some have re-planned their accommodation or skipped certain destinations as a result.
Business travel technologies today can collate data from firms’ travel management companies, employees’ location check-ins and other sources to provide valuable insights for firms to use to support their staff and manage risks. In 2020, I expect more firms to integrate their duty of care programme with their travel and expense programmes to expedite employee location and communication during crises. It’s critical for organisations to be able to identify and communicate with staff in real-time when a crisis occurs. The right technology platforms can enable that to happen, ensuring that a company does all it can to protect employees in on the road.
Taxes are a certainty, but don’t let the state be the sole beneficiary
Another thing I expect finance leaders to do in a lean 2020 is to put technology to work in complex processes where there’s money to be retrieved.
One area often missed out by companies is value-added tax (VAT) reclaim. VAT recovery is possible for travellers visiting more than 40 countries around the world. This can work out to be a sizeable sum for some firms. The bad news is that managing the entire reclaim process is tough, as each country has its own set of constantly changing recovery rules and practices. I expect more APAC companies to deploy technologies to help them manage this process in 2020, as the hazy economic outlook puts onus on finance leaders to improve cash flow.
Still on the subject of taxation technologies, some CFOs may take 2020 to explore cloud-based tax automation, or solutions that can make real-time assessments of business travellers’ tax and immigration obligations before they travel. These tools will help businesses ramp up efficiency, and gain visibility into potential risks before they occur − good attributes to have in an uncertain environment.
All in all, I see plenty of positive technological developments to keep business and finance leaders’ spirits up in 2020. Pick the right ones and have a rewarding new year.
Andy Watson is the senior vice president and general manager for Asia Pacific Japan and Greater China at SAP Concur, where he is responsible for leading the business for SAP Concur in this region. A 30-year IT industry veteran who’s been a chief financial officer himself, Watson has also held global and regional leadership roles in SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Cloud.
Hyatt Regency Phnom Penh has appointed Herman Kemp as general manager.
Kemp started off working on cruise liners, with the Holland America Line. After which, he joined the hospitality industry, where over 12 years he rose through F&B and management roles at Le Meridien, Sofitel and Carlton hotels, all in The Hague, a city in Netherlands.
His first posting as general manager was with Aryaduta Hotels in Indonesia in 2012. Prior to his Phnom Penh move, Kemp was general manager of Park Hyatt Siem Reap for nearly four years.
Expected to open in 2020, the 250-room Hyatt Regency Phnom Penh will mark the first Hyatt Regency hotel in Cambodia.
In these extraordinary times, Singapore continues to stand as a premier business events destination connecting the world to Asia. While COVID-19 has altered the events landscape, the fundamentals that have made Singapore successful – our vibrant business environment, outstanding infrastructure and future-ready workforce – remain unchanged.
Raising the bar for health and safety
As international business travel resumes, you can trust that Singapore will safeguard the well-being of visiting delegates and staff. We remain committed to upholding the highest standards of health and safety and to giving all our visitors peace of mind when they come to the Lion City. Hotels, restaurants, exhibition halls and other establishments have adopted new Safe Management Measures, such as social distancing and heightened cleaning of premises, to ensure reduced public health risk. Beyond these, the Singapore Government also launched SG Clean, a national mark of excellence for cleanliness, hygiene, and infection control.
Unique solutions by the events industry hark the dawn of a new era in business travel
Innovating for the future of business events
Singapore’s events industry is also implementing unique solutions to meet the emerging demands of a new era of business travel. Local companies are reinventing themselves – from enhancing digital offerings to developing forward-looking concepts for hybrid and virtual events.
For example, in June, homegrown event organiser Web in Travel (WiT) engaged more than 750 tourism business leaders to discuss the future of the industry in a global virtual summit. During the dinner break, WiT sent curated care packages to Singapore-based attendees and later even held a virtual dance party. With this mindset of continuous innovation, it is no wonder that Singapore was recently named the world’s most competitive economy for the second consecutive year (IMD World Competitiveness Ranking, 2020).
Singapore is where great minds converge, connect and create the future of business.
Plan your next business event at VisitSingapore.com/MICE.
The newly-opened Ritz-Carlton, Bangkok anchors the One Bangkok development with cosmopolitan elegance. Featuring the city's largest ballroom and a spectacular new penthouse suite, it delivers exceptional hardware and deeply authentic, soulful service for business and leisure travellers alike
Behind the imposing, Brutalist concrete that defines Zurich’s Oerlikon district lies a surprising secret. While its exterior honours the neighbourhood’s industrial roots, stepping inside Mama Shelter reveals a vibrant, neon-soaked world that is a far cry from its rigid shell
A polished urban retreat designed for business travellers, Hyatt Regency Kuala Lumpur at KL Midtown combines thoughtful design, seamless service, and exceptional facilities.
Andy Watson is the senior vice president and general manager for Asia Pacific Japan and Greater China at SAP Concur, where he is responsible for leading the business for SAP Concur in this region. A 30-year IT industry veteran who’s been a chief financial officer himself, Watson has also held global and regional leadership roles in SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Cloud.
