The Advantage Travel Partnership has today announced details of its 2024 Business Travel Symposium which will be hosted at London’s prestigious BMA House on Tuesday 6^th February. It will be the first time Advantage’s flagship business travel focused UK event has been held since 2019 and will be attended by approximately 150 business travel professionals including TMCs operating in the SME market and supplier partners across a wide range of sectors.

The Symposium will confront the pressing external challenges that currently impacting the business travel landscape through informative presentations, discussions, and debates, each masterfully orchestrated by thought-provoking speakers and industry peers. It will provide a platform for those seeking insight and solutions in the realm of business travel through a range of curated sessions.

The sessions taking place during the Symposium include:

The Future Lens – Looking ahead

Hear what’s hot and what’s not for business travel in 2024 and beyond.  Brought to life with key statistics from the latest Advantage Global Business Travel Review, combined with Festive Road’s Macroscope predictions for the next decade.

Magnifying Lens – The disaggregation of content

The need to book content from a wide range of unconnected sources has become one of the greatest operational challenges for TMCs and their corporate customers. This session explores what the future might look like and the strategies TMCs might follow to bring it all together.

Cracked Lens – It shouldn’t happen to an account manager
Managing client relationships can be tough – this session will show what not to do when you are looking to build perfect partnerships.

Relationships Under the Lens – Panel session

A lively panel debate exploring the critical ingredients to solid travel management company, buyer and supplier partnerships.

The highly regarded buyer bootcamp, focusing on the relationship between buyers and suppliers, will also see a return. A selection of highly experienced buyers will offer their combined knowledge and experience to help create a formula for successful partnerships. Attendees will have the opportunity to quiz the buyers on what they would like to see from their perfect partnership and what are the critical ingredients to strong partnerships. The results of the bootcamp will the basis for a white paper focused on remarkable partnerships which will be presented and showcased at The Advantage Conference in May 2024.

Matthew Peake, Director of Public Policy and Government Relations at Trainline, will be hosting an interactive session looking at what 2024 has in store for the business travel community through a political lens with an upcoming US election and potentially a UK election as well. Matthew brings a wealth of experience in developing regulatory strategy and public policy having worked extensively in both public and private sectors roles including Global Director of Public Policy at Onfido and as Head of Regulatory and Public Policy UK and IE at Verizon.

The Symposium’s closing keynote speaker will be entrepreneur and global AI and education thought leader, Priya Lakhani OBE. Priya is the Founding CEO of award-winning AI education technology company CENTURY and sat on the UK government’s AI Council. She appears regularly across global media to comment on current affairs as well as appearing on the BBC News flagship programme The Context as part of the AI Decoded team.

Guy Snelgar, Global Business Travel Director of The Advantage Travel Partnership, said: “We’re thrilled to be bringing back our Business Travel Symposium after a five-year hiatus. The Symposium will be an emphatic way to kick off the year and set our business travel agenda for 2024. Hosting large-scale events such as this highlights and reinforces Advantage’s position as the leading consortium for business travel in the UK with 72% of the BTN Europe’s Top TMCs.

“Given Advantage’s global reach, together with our ambition to deliver even greater commercial benefits as a one-stop-shop business hub to our member network, our ability to leverage increasingly stronger deals and business solutions with our partners gathers pace, and this event will be an opportunity to share our progress and plans moving forward.”

Sonia Michaels, Head of Business Travel Services & Events of The Advantage Travel Partnership, added: “We currently have a lot of exciting, young talent coming through in the business travel industry and we would like the Symposium to be an opportunity for these future leaders to grow and learn. This is an area I feel passionate about, and we will be actively encouraging our member businesses to invite their stars of the future to attend the Symposium and gain exposure to an important industry event.”

Michael’s says that the event is returning to BMA House due to its strong sustainability credentials which align with Advantage’s own ESG events charter. The venue has received numerous awards in recognition of its sustainability initiatives and recently received Gold in the sustainability award for venues (up to 400 attendees) at the London Venue Awards.

She concluded: “We are pleased to be staging the Business Travel Symposium at BMA House again.  It’s impressive commitment to sustainability is a key factor for us in our approach to all events as we look to reduce our carbon footprint.”