Reshaping business of travel, hospitality

Reshaping business of travel, hospitality Corporates and professionals from airline, travel and hospitality industries delve into finer points of business at the 8th Travel M!CE & Corporate Show, in Chennai.

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With more than 1,000 fruitful business meetings, the 8th edition of Travel M!CE and Corporate Show concluded successfully in Chennai. Over a span of two days, the select gathering welcomed corporates and professionals from airline and hospitality sectors, as well as international tourism boards. Over the years, the platform has earned a reputation for bringing decision makers and stakeholders under one roof for an insightful interaction that strictly deliver business.

Featuring Suraj Nair, Founder, Travel Spends; Ashish Arpit, CEO, Itilite; Gaurav Nagwekar, Head, Corporate Travel, Reliance Industries, Jyoti Varma, renowned industry expert and consultant, Travel M!CE and Corporate Show and an audience of around 200-strong professionals and decision makers from corporate airline, travel and hospitality industries, the panel discussion witnessed highly animated and forward-looking conversation around—the right fit TMC—a myth or reality? The subject touched upon the right pain points and attracted varied yet insightful perspectives from the panellists and audience alike.

New challenges
Riding on the rising demand for in-person events, M!CE makes a big comeback on corporate calendars. With an unspent budget and an appetite to connect and converse, the corporates are back with incentive travel and big M!CE groups. Reflecting upon the spectacular recovery of M!CE, Suraj Nair, Founder, Travel Spends, said, “Bouncing back from COVID, the business started zooming up. Hotel and airline costs went over the roof and many of us, heading travel vertical at corporates, are still grappling with these things.” While M!CE is back with a bang, the price rise has got many corporates staring at the pertinent question of how do we control costs? Addressing the question, Nair believed, “The balance of demand and supply over the period of time is going to bring some sanity to the market.” Highlighting two major challenges for TMCs, Gaurav Nagwekar, Head, Corporate Travel, Reliance Industries, explained, “Talent is an area where TMCs are losing their pulse.”

Collaboration
Delving into the complexity of processes, Ashish Arpit, CEO, Itilite, explained, “Booking is one aspect of digitization program. Before booking there are a series of workflows, which need to be automated and there comes the complexity. For instance, the kind of approval rules which one company will have, will be very different from what other companies will have. Hence, our focus has been to not only automate the booking process but also accommodate the company policies and rules around it.”

Plug-in & play
Underlining how one supplier cannot bring everything under the roof, Nair asked the corporate representatives if they are ready to create the framework wherein, they allow the people to plug and integrate into their system. Agreeing with the idea, Nagwekar said, “Building the framework is critical for any corporate in this era.”

RFPs not hot anymore
While the panellists and audience agreed that it is never one size fits all scenario, they differed on the subject whether RFPs of hotels are required or not? “Gone are the days when RFPs are used to be a hot cake,” stated Nair. In a major departure from 2019, most of the corporates accepted that they do not ask for RFPs anymore.

Varma summed up, “The concept of lower price wins needs to change. It is not the right thing to push down the supplier on pricing. Let the buyer also decide what this service costs. Corporates need to see—will that service be valuable to them.”