The first ABT-ACTE Russia educational session in Saint Petersburg has gathered corporate buyers not only from the city on the Neva River
On August 26-27th, 2014 the first ABT-ACTE Russia educational session in Saint Petersburg was held.
On the eve of the official part of the event a networking cocktail was held in miXup bar of W hotel, which has the view on one of the main Saint Petersburg landmarks, Saint Isaac’s Cathedral. Executive director of ABT-ACTE Russia Julia Kutina took the greeting word. She thanked the staff and management of W St. Petersburg for the opportunity to meet in such a cozy atmosphere and said a few words about the mission of ABT-ACTE Russia.
Anna Kolebaeva, development director of Starwood Hotels & Resorts in Russia and the CIS spoke about special features of hotels that are united under the W brand. W hotels are focused at guests who seek balance between fashion and lifestyle, the focus in W hotels is on details and customized approach. The first hotel of the chain was W New York, which opened its doors in November 1998, later similar hotels appeared in other large cities — Los Angeles, Seattle, Seoul, Chicago.
The first hotel in Europe was W Hotel in Istanbul, which was opened in 1998. Ms Kolebaeva stressed, that the W brand was based on three cornerstones — fashion, music and design. It is no coincidence that W hotels are in constant search of new talents (there is the W-talents program), take part in fashion weeks in Milan and Paris and turn to world famous musicians for help. For example, one of W hotel stars is Michaelangelo L’Acqua, the world famous expert in musical branding.
Ms Kolebaeva thanked her colleagues from ABT-ACTE Russia for long and fruitful cooperation. Maria Cheblakova, sales director of W St. Petersburg also expressed her gratitude: «Welcome to W! It is the first time we have taken part in ABT-ACTE Russia events and we hope that this first time will be far not the last one».
The speech of the external expert, the House of Romanov representative in Russia Ivan Sergeevich Artsishevsky entitled «Business etiquette at meetings and its pitfalls» sparked great interest of the participants of the cocktail. Mr Artsishevsky cited many examples of his own experience in arrangement of events of the highest rank, including meetings of the heads of world leading countries — Russia, USA, Great Britain, France.
«Etiquette is an external part of culture, it is a system of behaviour, a complex of cultural traditions of the society», Mr Artsishevsky said. «You should keep in mind that behaviour rules may vary depending on the type of event. For example, at a public reception the main attention is paid to an elderly man or a woman, and at a business meeting it is the official hierarchy that matters. If one participant of talks has a higher rank than the others, he must greet them first. If the parties of the talks have equal positions, it is the age factor that comes into play again», Mr Artsishevsky stressed.
The speaker complained about the fact that notions are often confused when events are organized. For example, one of reception types is often called «fourchette», which is completely wrong. A fourchette is a type of table layout when participants use only forks (from the French «fourchette» — a fork— editor’s note.), unlike a buffet, when the entire cutlery is placed on 50 tables. At fourchette tables are used only to put dirty dishes on them.
Mr Artsishevsky told the audience about many other nuances of business etiquette and finished his speech with a wish people learned to communicate not only with foreign partners, but with each other as well.
A nice part of the evening was a lottery by W St. Petersburg: the winners got a bottle of Magnum champagne from Alain Ducasse, two lunches for two persons in Alain Ducasse restaurant and a voucher for a stay at W hotel with the access to the wet zone.
Ilya Zhakhashev from UTS Group shared his impressions: «I was very much surprised with such an approach to event organization — the participants have an opportunity not only to take part in a cocktail party, but also to spend time very usefully. I liked it very much and hope that ABT-ACTE Russia will hold more of its sessions in Saint Petersburg.»
The second day and the main part of the Educational session «Modern travel management. Business trip management. Events arrangement», which was held in the ballroom of the Astoria hotel, was opened again by Julia Kutina, who stressed the uniqueness of this event, because previous ABT sessions were held only in Moscow. Ms Kutina thanked partners — the Astoria Hotel, Zelenski Corporate Travel Solutions and UTS Group business travel agencies, Travelport technological company, Accord transport company, Helios, a Greek hotel chain, HRS.com international portal, Starwood Hotels&Resorts, Ginza Prime for their help in arrangement of the session.
Piero Magrino, Astoria manager took the greeting word: «I would like to thank ABT-ACTE Russia for choosing our historic hotel, where many famous people have stayed. For us it is a unique chance to keep loyalty to our brand».
Moderator of the session was ABT deputy executive director Ekaterina Aleksandrova, who presented the speakers and reminded the participants of the opportunity to ask questions after each speech.
The first speaker was administrative director of Yota Roman Bourkov. He noted that for 6 years of his work in business administration travel costs had amounted to a considerable part (up to one fourth) of the company’s total expenses. Roman compared development and implementation of a travel policy with a repair of a flat — complicated, but necessary. This document helps manage business travel costs and simplifies the process of business trip arrangement. Again, if a company has a proper travel policy, there is a clear procedure of communication with other internal services (mobile telephony, transport, voluntary health insurance). A very important part of the project after procedure development is informing the staff about its main provisions, effective communication. In Mr Bourkov’s opinion, regulation on travel assignment is very important, it is the most efficient way of communicating with back offices, that in their turn are so much submerged into staff and law-related document turnover, that it is vitally important for them to have a document that stipulates liabilities of the employer and the employee in the process of business trip arrangement.
Mr Bourkov pointed out the importance of deviation control, even if all possible risks and difficulties were taken into account when the business trip was planned, some unpredictable circumstances may arise, that need to be determined and worked out, so that they should not occur in the future. Nevertheless, if they do happen, an employee will have clear instructions how to behave in a certain situation.
When Ekaterina Aleksandrova asked how much time was necessary to develop a travel policy from scratch, Mr Bourkov said three months was enough. The second speaker was a representative of travel service providers. Kseniya Rebrova’s (UTS Group) speech named «Travel policy: the important in detail» was devoted to travel policy actualization, a very urgent matter, because companies often apply out of date limits or even are entrapped technologically in the previous century. Here obvious factors connected with the development of technologies and introduction of new services come into play, they make booking easier and help avoid unforeseen circumstances. «For example changes in the amount of agent commission by airlines can lead to changes in service fees of agencies» Ms Rebrova said.
If we speak about the limits stipulated by the travel policy, they also should be updated — prices grow with time, and the company may need to send its employees on business trips more often. In this case you should keep up with the times, use online booking tools actively: «They are fully automated, you can easily trace and optimize all the processes, which results in elementary economy», the speaker said.
Moreover, Ms Rebrova calls for reasonable economy: «Travel policy is not only confined to limits, you should take into account service classes, the amount of stars a hotel has, extra expenses and many other things. The employee must feel comfortable during his business trip».
Irina Kostuykova, Travel Head of Business Travel in Kaspersky Lab spoke about tenders for business travel service providers. At first she explained the essence of the choice itself, because a lot, if not everything depends on the right choice. The same is true for travel services. We are choosing something or someone all the time. A tender helps us do that, but it is preceded by many decisions. First of all, you have to decide what kind of tender you will hold — there are open and closed tenders, traditional tenders, auctions etc. Prospective providers are very diverse as well — they include TMCs (business travel agencies), MICE agencies, airlines, hotels, transport companies and other services providers.
When all the input data has been defined, you have the main stages of the tender process ahead of you. You need to prepare and send out tender documentation, define the short list of tender participants, take the final decision, declare the winner (and announce tender results to all the participants, including those who have not won), and after that you start working on the agreement.
After the coffee break the session continued with the speech of Yandex.Money administrative director, Elena Reisentul. Her report was devoted to optimization of business travel expenses. In Ms Reisentul`s opinion, this work should be carried out in three directions — inside the company, inside the department and with the provider. The regulation should be read by every employee, the document should be free of prohibiting words (like «you may not», «it is prohibited» and similar ones).
According to the opinion of discussion participants, travel costs optimization is a process that should follow market realities. For example, after the pricing of railway tickets had been changed, some companies decided to arrange more business trips in the middle of the week, and not in the beginning or the end.
Another opportunity to cut the travel budget is to use video conferencing more actively. If we speak about providers, according to Ms Reisentul, they offer invaluable help in working with documents and making reports, while it is more reasonable to impose the task of travel costs control on your own travel manager.
The final report was made by Dmitry Saveliev, an independent expert in business travel and administrative business support. He spoke about project management and sounded the main components of a successful event. You should adhere to a certain consequence of actions when you run a project. Everything starts from planning, which includes the analysis of financial capacity of the corporation itself, providers` resources and capabilities. After that you can proceed to a tender. And the final stage includes closing documents and carrying out feedback analysis.
Mr Saveliev stressed that any company needs to know what its customers think about it. Thus, one of the main reasons the famous American airline Pan American disappeared in 1991 was the fact that its management did not approve of negative opinions about it. Employees who were responsible for market research created the misleading picture of well-being, while passengers` multiple critical remarks were left unheard. This resulted in full fiasco. This is why honest and open feedback is very important for relations between the buyer and the provider of business travel services.
When Mr Saveliev spoke about a successful event, he focused on MICE geography — does the chosen destination correspond to the goal that was set? What are visa nuances? What is transport accessibility and is there a suitable venue of sufficient quality in the country at all? These questions should be raised in the first turn. According to Mr Saveliev`s data, the most popular MICE destinations in the world are the USA, Germany (together with Switzerland and Lichtenstein), and Spain. As for Russian business travellers, they prefer Turkey, France (Cote d`Azur, first of all) and countries of the CIS.
After the reports were over, participants of the session took part in the panel discussion. Ekaterina Aleksandrova asked the audience about stresses and lack of comfort during business trips. Anna Markova from JTI noted, that her company regularly organized special presentations and trainings devoted to improvement and changes in the process of business trip arrangement, based on the latest information about its employees` trips: «We thus achieve a certain balance between our aim to optimize costs and the comfort of our employees».
The second question dealt with the number of TMCs that would be optimum for the buyer. Although many companies prefer working only with one agency, participants of the discussion agreed that it sometimes made sense having an alternative provider, especially the one who dealt with certain types or limited amounts of services.
The final part of the session included a lottery, prizes for which were provided by ABT-ACTE Russia partners — UTS Group, Ginza Group, Accord, Astoria.
Anna Markova from JTI shared her impressions of the educational session: «I liked the vivid discussions very much. In general, I have learned a lot of new information and will definitely recommend visiting similar events held by ABT-ACTE Russia to my colleagues».
«Events like that are interesting not only due to new knowledge. Even if many aspects are known to you, you make sure once again that you do your work in the right way, because your colleagues do it in the same way. They have the same questions as I do, and it is a great impetus to practice an even more professional approach to your work», Tatyana Zimina from Alex Fitness (Saint Petersburg) said.
Anna Sysolyatina from BTK group which was one of lottery winners, said: «The first ABT-ACTE Russia educational session in Saint Petersburg has made a great impression not only due to its great organization, but also due to the huge amount of useful information that you can hardly find anywhere else. It has given us knowledge that you can freely put into practice».
Till the end of 2014 an educational seminar on MICE geography will be held in Saint Petersburg, and educational sessions are going to be held in Kazan and Tyumen.
Oleg Abarnikov