Russian Association of Business Travel establishes Expert Panel

Due to a constant increase in the number of ABT projects as well as in the number of companies participating in this largest association of corporate travel buyers, ABT has taken a strategic decision to establish an Expert Panel — a consultative body, which provides consultations and informational support for ABT activities.

ABT considers the creation of this new body as a crucial step, aimed at promoting cooperation and common grounds between this organization and its members. The first Expert Panel meeting took place on March the 12th, 2013. Julia Kutina, ABT Executive director took the greeting word. She stressed the necessity and importance of travel experts opinion for strategic planning of ABT`s activities and elaboration of a constructive approach to its current and future projects.

The Expert Panel includes four most active ABT participants — travel industry professionals, representing the largest corporate travel buyers on the domestic market. They are: Irina Kuznetsova, Vice President, Head of Costs Analysis & Control Division of VTB Bank, Irina Kostyukova, Head of Business Travel in Kaspersky Lab, Tatyana Poplavskaya, Managing director of corporate support department in the financial corporation «Otkritie» and Tatiana Ovchinnikova, congress manager in Bayer.

Irina Kostiukova gave the following comments on her participation in the first meeting: «I welcome everything that promotes communication between people in a certain professional field. It broadens our outlook, allows us to share practices and cumulate business contacts in order to share even more information. The world around us changes dramatically: if you don’t try to get on the leaving train, you can be a good craftsman, but you can hardly grow into a master. ABT`s usefulness and necessity can hardly be overestimated. I have always been interested in the entrails of such projects. When you attend a meeting, you get a finished product. What preceded it, who devised and organized it, why were this very topic, place and people chosen? It goes without saying that it is twice as interesting to be in this process yourself and to invent new project recipes. I am very grateful to ABT for inviting me to become an Expert Panel participant. And I think the presence of corporate buyers is crucial for developing a really constructive approach to new steps and development strategies of the Association. Unfortunately, the notion of business travel in Russia is very vague yet. Many have come to this industry by a twist of fate and are engaged in it superficially, without going into details. But this theme is much broader and more interesting than it is believed. Besides, information is scarce at the moment. So we definitely have a lot to work at».

All the Expert Panel participants appreciated the importance of the new ABT initiative and expressed their hope for future contribution of this professional consultative body to the development of the business travel market in Russia.