Corporate Traveller, the SME-focused corporate travel arm of Flight Centre Travel Group, has launched a dedicated Meetings & Events service in the UK. The launch coincides with research by Corporate Traveller that recently found that events are now the single biggest reason UK businesses travel (cited by 70% of businesses).
The same research found that 40% of UK businesses expect their meetings and events spend to grow over the next year, and 38% are already putting more than half their total travel budget towards meetings and events.
Corporate Traveller says this demand is often falling in the hands of staff without dedicated event planning experience, such as executive assistants and office managers, who are being asked to source venues and manage logistics without specialist support.
The new offering covers two services: Managed Meetings, for gatherings of 10-200 attendees, covering venue sourcing and audio-visual coordination, and Event Management, a full end-to-end service for events of 75 or more delegates, covering everything from pre-event planning through to onsite delivery and post-event reporting. Both are delivered by an in-house Meetings & Events team rather than a separate agency, backed by FCTG’s global buying power for negotiated rates.
Bonnie Smith, head of Corporate Traveller UK, said: “Events have become the single biggest reason our customers travel, and this research shows real growth ahead, but the businesses driving that growth aren’t always resourced to manage it. Rather than asking customers to bring in a separate agency, we’ve built this offering around the same relationship they already trust us for on travel.”
Smith added: “As events keep growing as a share of spend, we see this becoming a core part of how we support UK businesses, giving smaller organisations the kind of dedicated delivery that’s traditionally only been available to much bigger ones.”