LONGHAUL MICE planners who attended the Business Matching session in Jakarta last week have said they are keen to organise events, meetings or post-conference incentive tours in Indonesia.

The 12 European buyers were in the city as part of the post-tour organised by the Indonesia Ministry of Tourism, in conjunction with the Singapore MICE Forum and the Asia Meeting & Incentive Travel Exchange 2016.

Stephane Mockels, head of MICE, Emile Weber Voyages France, said: “We have confirmed plans for three conferences to take place in Singapore and we are now looking for an incentive destination for our corporate clients in the banking and insurance industries. These will be small groups with very high level (executives), and we are looking for high-end products.”

Kin Fung Michael Chow, director – corporate development & staff affairs of Provident Global Capital Group, South Pacific Asia and The Great China Region, said the group has 49 projects all over the world and organises 60 meetings and four incentive trips every year.

Chow said: “We used to organise them in Europe but with the economic situation, we now look at Asia. As we have many meetings, we keep looking for new destinations. I just did one in Bali and am looking at what Jakarta has to offer.”

Meanwhile, Shell Eastern Petroleum has just set up an events team in Singapore and the company is looking to expand its supplier base in the Asia-Pacific region; Indonesia is included, while Singapore will be the hub.

For AD Meetings & Events based in Rome, Italy, its major business is in Asia and its director, Debora Comune, said destinations like Bali are not new anymore and she was instead interested in up-and-coming ones like Toraja in South Sulawesi.

One of the sellers, Abdullah Lajam, managing director of Abbey Travel Indonesia, said regionally, Indonesia is seen as a good value destination when compared to Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam where prices have started to rise. However, the challenge is having to create awareness of the destination among event planners.

Wienna Valerie Damanik, account director of Cakrawala Event Organizer Indonesia, also sees the potential of Jakarta as a destination, and expects the Ministry of Tourism to organise such events more often to help buyers become more familiar with the destination.

TWENTY association executives from around Asia-Pacific have benefitted from the inaugural PCMA Asia-Pacific Scholarship which funded their trip to Singapore in July for the PCMA Meetings Forum.

Created by the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) and the Singapore Exhibition and Convention Bureau, the scholarship also drew interest and funding support from Tourism New Zealand, Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau, Korea Tourism Organization.

Usa Thisyakorn, president of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society of Thailand and congress chair of the 8th Asian Congress of Pediatric Infectious Disease 2016, was one of the scholarship recipients. She told TTGmice e-Weekly that the scholarship provided her with a “valuable learning experience” at the Forum.

“The discussions here are in-depth and the perspectives are global – not something association executives can easily access in Thailand,” Usa remarked, adding that she found the education focus on sponsorship issues especially beneficial.

Haesook Ma, assistant manager, convention team with the Korea MICE Bureau, said her organisation was motivated to field three local association executives for the scholarship as it recognised the educational value of the Forum.

Ma said: “The international speakers at the Forum provided our scholars with a precious opportunity to learn from the more experienced Western associations. While we have the annual Korea MICE Expo, we do not have anything that focuses heavily on association education.”

“Furthermore, our scholars act as ambassadors of South Korea when they converse with fellow association executives,” she added.

Commenting on the outcome of the scholarship, Jeannie Lim, executive director, conventions, meetings & incentive travel with the Singapore Tourism Board, said: “We are heartened by the interest and response to the inaugural PCMA Asia-Pacific Scholarship. The positive feedback received from the scholarship recipients underscores the need to champion and cultivate association executives and meeting planners. With our partners, we hope to grow the scholarship and further support association executives in the region next year.”

CARLSON Wagonlit Travel’s (CWT) Solutions Group has introduced four new proprietary products to help corporate travel managers cut costs and engage their travellers in new ways.

The new products help companies reduce non-compliant spending, reclaim surcharges on corporate car rentals, analyse traveller data and provide ground transportation options.

According to CWT research, travel managers don’t have visibility over nearly a third of a company’s travel and expense (T&E) spend because it isn’t consolidated in a single data set. With the new solution, CWT hopes to give them better control of expense management.

Christophe Renard, vice president of CWT Solutions Group Worldwide explained: “Our T&E platform automatically consolidates all data sources, including from the travel management company, from credit card spend, and third party suppliers. We use that information to provide an immediate view of all non-compliant spending.

“We can also reconstruct the total cost of each trip. Travel managers can then have an accurate view of all spending, compliant and non-compliant, enabling them to adjust their policy as necessary, or make sure it is better communicated internally.”

He continued: “Our new traveller segmentation platform segments travellers’ behaviour using key data including demographics, seniority and travel frequency information. It means travel managers can tailor their communication to each traveller, encouraging those travellers to comply with the policy. The end result is greater savings and a reduced overall travel spend.”

And on helping corporates save on car rental surcharge, Renard said CWT Solutions Group “shares the recovered costs” with clients and gives them “the bulk of the savings”.

CWT’s new solution also gives travel managers the means to guide their travellers to the most appropriate form of transport.

PARIS, Jakarta, Istanbul – terror is no longer limited to cities like Kabul or Aleppo. Environmental events such as floods, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions are also part of daily risks. These can happen anywhere, 24/7/365. While individuals are primarily responsible for their own safety, companies have a fiduciary responsibility, especially towards corporate travellers, who are exposed to constantly changing risks.

In emergencies, TMC data is used to determine what travellers are in risk areas, however, this only provides departure/arrival airport. Direct bookings and use of OTA’s exacerbate this problem and fragment data even more.

Looking at Brussels for example: Were travellers at the airport or the downtown subway station during the attacks? Did they use public transport? Were they even in Brussels or outside the city? Can travellers be contacted to verify they’re safe? Can emergency information be sent instantaneously? Can travellers advise of emergencies, seek help or allow for notification to others?

Current data sources are woefully inadequate, however, there are new, reliable and supplier-neutral options – traveller/geo-tracking. These systems centre around the ability to locate travellers based on their mobile phone signal. With the full knowledge and consent of the traveller, an app is installed that can then transmit its location. This not only provides the true location of the traveller but allows to warn them of dangers in their vicinity, organise assistance or obtain live, on-the-ground information. This technology can revolutionise traveller safety and security.

But it also raises questions on rights to privacy and data privacy.

Geo-tracking is the most efficient method to determine the true location of travellers and solve the issue of fragmented data. Obviously these systems are not free-of-charge and putting together a business case can be tricky. The ROI is difficult to determine as, if the system is used properly and efficiently, there will be no “savings” or “return on investment” as such.

Duty of care and safety and security are not topics that can be won with a cost argument, however, the potential price tag of only one incident, one injured employee, one death, one abduction can exceed any system cost by far.

Legally, collecting personal data through geo-tracking falls under the heading of individuals’ right to privacy and data privacy, and is subject to the relevant national laws. In the past geo-tracking had a bad reputation as companies frequently used it to monitor employees and (ab)use the data to make conclusions on employee behaviour, efficiency, etc. This has caused many governments to limit or even prohibit the use of geo-tracking by corporations. However, the beneficial, non “big brother” use of this technology in the field of traveller safety and security is too new to be clearly defined by law.

An exact set of rules that companies can use worldwide does not exist. Generally the location of the traveller’s employment contract determines which national law applies. All this appears to be truly challenging, however, a detailed analysis of the different rules and regulation does allow us to draft an overarching set of rules.

• Explain employees the advantages of emergency apps and geo-tracking, who will have access to the data and under what circumstances and when data is erased
• Advise that use is voluntary and that employee can decline and/or withdraw consent at any time and without reason
• No consequences or travel ban if employee declines
• Explicitly consent in writing to track – not as part of employment contract or travel-policy
• Never limited use to just one group of travellers e.g. management
• Allow traveller to disable the software, however, advise of risks in doing so
• Irretrievably delete all date once trip is completed

Limiting the tracking feature through a privacy mode is an effective alternative if the use of full-time/permanent tracking is not a suitable option.

This feature was recently introduced by Vismo, a UK global tracking solutions provider. In an emergency, the traveller can turn off the privacy mode and the exact geo-location is immediately transmitted to the company. Additionally, in the event of a crisis the privacy mode can be switched off remotely by the system administrator and the traveller is notified.

Geo-tracking can be the panacea for the safety and security concerns of our business travellers and solve many of the problems that have limited duty of care. Granted, not every employee may consent to take part in the programme and implementation may be time consuming. On the other hand, the ever increasing security threats around the world require an all encompassing duty of care programme that does not rely of fragmented booking information alone.

By Andreas J G Wellauer

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Andreas J G Wellauer is a leading expert, author and speaker on corporate travel management. His global background includes working for UBS Hong Kong, ADB Manila, Woolworth Australia and the UN in New York. Wellauer is CEO of German based GALIANT Consulting, a company focusing on strategic, innovative and emerging travel-trend consulting.