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January 2018 
Calendar of Events
January Meeting
Buyer Panel - Goals and Priorities for 2018
January 18, 2018
11:30 AM to 1:30 PM
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Juniper Hotel Cupertino, a Curio Collection by Hilton
10050 S. De Anza Blvd.
Cupertino, CA 95014
Venue Website
Now is the time to come up with the New Year resolution!
What defines your "success" in corporate travel management?
What KPIs are you tracking and had a good reaction from your senior management?
What new KPIs you should think about?
What changes do you want to see in your program?
What are the steps are you taking to make a wish into reality?
Come to the meeting ready to ask questions or join the discussion with the buyer panelists.
This meeting will be moderated by our President Jean Sloan - Global Travel Manager, Xilinx
Panelists:
Laura Hodgkinson, CTC, GLP - Sr. Global Travel Strategy Leader, PayPal
Kelly Smith - Manager, Global Travel, Talend
Mary Greiner - Global Travel Manager, ServiceNow Now
What Did I Miss?
November 2017 Meeting
To Social Media or Not to Social Media? Connect with your travelers in real time
We recently caught up with busy Angela Evangelista, Travel & Expense Manager at Twitter. She had great things to say about her recent experience as a speaker on our panel in November, so we thought we would share her valuable feedback you. In addition to being a great supporter of our industry and SVBTA, Anjela has decided to join our PR Committee for 2018 and we’re looking forward to her expertise!
Welcome to the team Anjela!
How is social media best used for business travelers and what are your suggestions?
Use a platform which your travelers are already using. You'll have a hard time getting engagement if your travelers have to learn a new system or tool. Keep your messaging concise and utilize images. Partner with your suppliers on fun promotions to drive engagement and get your travelers excited about your travel program. Be mindful of sharing private or personal info on social media.
Can you summarize your experience speaking to SVBTA?
??This was such a fun experience! I really enjoyed the panel discussion went two-way with the audience. There was some great insight shared and I hope I was able to provide some valuable tips on incorporating social media into everyone's travel program. It was really nice to have Rob from Southwest on deck to share from a supplier perspective, as I think his tips were valuable to the Allied members. Grant was an excellent facilitator and he did a great job creating the deck and guiding the conversation.
What important points were made from your view?
?I think ?the idea of starting up a social media plan can be daunting, so take an easy start and begin with an email monthly/quarterly newsletter. I use mailchimp to send out my newsletters, and it's really easy and intuitive tool to use for creating professional looking newsletters.
December 2018 Meeting
2018 Forecast – A Perspective of the New Year
What a beautiful lunch crowd at last month’s Santa Clara Hilton/ SVBTA meeting! And if you match that up with pre-holiday vacation time, what do you get? SVBTA at its finest!
The Hilton graciously opened up their elegant lobby area to our members and guests who enjoyed champagne as well as a fun photo booth! Michael Anderson, Director Government Relations held a fun “stocking stuffers” prize drawing that drew generous supplier prize donations. Numerous participants took their chances by buying a stocking in hope of winning anything from travel and gift certificates to holiday baskets of gourmet goodies. Our Community Outreach volunteers lead by Michele Wilson collected items for the clothing drive, supporting Sacred Heart of Silicon Valley.
Our program began with warm wishes and greetings from our celebrated platinum sponsor, CEO Maurice Brewster and Business Development Manager Pam Schramm of Mosaic Global Transportation. The engaging speaker panel addressed a number of hot travel industry topics including the insanity of the RFP hotel season and artificial intelligence. It was said that 2018 will be the year that we get our sanity back!
With AI tackling so many of the mundane service aspects of our business already, we will surely be able to focus our attention on the more complex aspects to become more strategic and cost effective. It was also stated that there have been more industry investments in technology in the past two years than there has been over the past 40 years combined. Meanwhile the “voice of the traveler” continues to be the best guide to success.
Overall more strategies to consider for your 2018 include:
- Using data to renegotiate airfare agreements, what is data telling us about the marketplace?
- Negotiating the total cost of the tickets to drive the cost down
- NDC and more highly personalized offers, it’s time to negotiate ancillary services to understand total costs of a trip
- Blockchain? Here’s an example pulled from Forbes ..” to extend the vision from a passenger's perspective, imagine going from home to the airport for a flight, then from the destination airport to your hotel and straight to your room without standing in a single line or sharing your personal data. Managing frequent flyer and loyalty programs and tracking baggage can also be a piece of cake, using blockchain technology as the information "connector."
- Virtual payment continues to thrive
- Tech to check?
- One order http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/airline-distribution/Pages/oneorder.aspx
- Fizzy https://fizzy.axa/
- Fare Flyer https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/premium-fare-deals-740/
- Asian consumer travel from Skift conference 2017 https://skift.com/2017/05/30/video-changing-behavior-of-asian-travelers-is-reshaping-brand-expectations/
- Webjet, Rockettrip and Shocard
Thank you to our speakers Eric Jongeling, Director of the CWT Hotel Solutions Group, April Bridgeman, Managing Partner Advito and Neil Hammond, Partner Gold Spring Consulting. We agree with you it is definitely a very “exciting time to be in this industry!”
Calendar of Events
CLICK HERE for our events listing
Community Outreach
Community Outreach 2018 – “We want to hear from you!”
Our Community Outreach team wants YOU to tell us what you think! A number of great and local charitable organizations were supported by SVBTA in 2017 thanks to the generosity of our members and friends.
We look forward to another great year of sharing and giving back to the communities where we live and work in 2018. We are interested in hearing about the organizations that you may support and why you think that we could focus efforts on those groups to assist. Our volunteers would like to organize new opportunities for more food and clothing drives, walks to raise funds and other similar events.
In addition, you will have a chance to support the Mission City Fund at our upcoming meeting on January 18th.
We’re excited to announce this worthy organization will be our 2018 focus Charity of the Year!
Learn more here: http://www.missioncityfund.org/.
Your Community Outreach Team has also selected Child Advocates of Silicon Valley as a quarterly recipient. Looking forward to another great year! Thank you to all of you for making 2017 a banner year in giving to our community!
Please let us know who you think we should be supporting in our community, we look forward to hearing from you. [email protected]
Michele Wilson, Community Outreach Director
Professional Development
New Scholarships are Available!
Apply before February 23rd
Attention all Members! Scholarship Grants are available for the following:
1) GBTA Membership
2) GBTA Convention
3) SVBTA Membership Renewal
4) Educational Grant - Global Travel Professional Certification (GTP)
5) GTP Certification/Re certification Exam or study guide
6) Educational Grant towards GLP Courses and/or GBTA Fundamentals courses.
- 2018 Scholarship Round 1
- Opens January 1st
- Deadline – February 23rd
To apply please CLICK HERE
Any questions please reach out to [email protected]
Government Affairs
Thank You for a Great 2017!
“Greetings from the Government Relations Team! With the generous support of our members who donated prizes for our December meeting we raised over $1500.00 in donations for the 2018 Chapter Challenge. The proceeds will support the efforts of the GBTA Business Travel PAC which advocates issues critical to our Industry to our elected members of Congress.
This year, we will support a campaign to oppose any increase in Passenger Facility Charges (PFC’s) on airline tickets which discourage business travel. SVBTA will also support the TSA Modernization Act which advances the deployment of new technologies at security checkpoints, mitigate risks to public areas at airports, and reduce delays in air travel. The bill would also give the TSA additional tools to expand TSA PreCheck, a valuable trusted traveler program that increases security at the checkpoint while providing for expedited screening.
We welcome your participation and involvement in our Committee! Please contact Michael Anderson: [email protected] to learn more about the activities SVBTA will participate in on a local and national level to support GBTA and our Industry at large.”
Michael Anderson
Director – SVBTA Government Relations
Sponsor Opportunities
2018 Sponsorship Opportunities are now OPEN!
The Sponsorship Committee welcomes sponsorship inquires for our 2018 monthly meetings & events!
Contact [email protected] for more information.
Social Media
Please join us on the following social media sites
NEW for 2018
Instagram GBTA – Silicon Valley Chapter
Twitter @svbta
Facebook www.facebook.com/svbta
LinkedIn Groups Silicon Valley Business Travel Association