By Mark Hubrich, Founder & VP Client and Industry Relations
With the start of the new year, things seem to have gotten busy again and the year looks to be off to a great start. I attended a Georgia Business Travel luncheon yesterday with Jay Campbell from BTN as the speaker who spoke about 2011 in review and expectations for 2012. From some of the conversations around the room, there seemed to be an optimistic viewpoint for business in 2012. One of the colleagues at my table mentioned to me that last Wednesday they had a record number of transactions for their travel agency. Volumes with her existing clients are picking up and they had added some new clients to start the year. Another great piece of news this week was the quarterly survey from Global Business Travel Association (Press Release Here) which is predicting an increase in 2012 and an estimate of 4.6% growth in travel spend. The term I keep hearing is “cautiously optimistic”.
SignUp4 is launching several new initiatives in 2012, which will be exciting. We are focusing more energy on helping to educate the event and meeting management industry and expanding our offerings of webinars and white papers. Next week we will be hosting our first webinar of the year with Shirley Kuhloie presenting strategic sourcing for corporations. Shirley has a background in both the agency and corporate worlds and has worked with Strategic Meetings Management with such global corporations as Carlson Wagonlit Travel and Hewlett Packard. This webinar will focus on Strategic Hotel Procurement: Increasing control and savings. Check out our webinar page to register for a live session of this webinar or watch a recorded version after January 18th. SignUp4 is planning many more webinars throughout the year bringing in industry experts to lead the education with current relevant topics on Strategic Meetings Management. In addition to the webinars, we will be launching follow up white papers to provide takeaways for guidance to apply to your company and career. Be sure to check back to the www.signup4.com website often for fresh and resourceful content throughout the year. We look forward to helping our clients and the industry in adapting and changing with the technology and industry for the upcoming year.
It’s going to be an exciting year!
