Message from the Office of the GBTA President

*This post was also sent as an email to GBTA Members.*

Dear GBTA Member,

I recently had the honor of attending the GBTA Foundation Gala and celebrating the Foundation’s 20th Anniversary. The gala highlighted the groundbreaking research the Foundation has conducted on behalf of the industry. That research has made the Foundation a global thought leader in the business travel industry. Its insights and assessments have been invaluable to GBTA’s members, business travel professionals around the world and the industry as a whole. I can’t imagine where we would be without the Foundation’s work.

The Foundation’s research provides the basis for much of the cutting-edge educational programming that GBTA offers. We draw upon the Foundation’s work to develop and deliver high-quality training to power the careers of business travel professionals at every level.

I want to highlight some of GBTA’s upcoming and ongoing educational opportunities.

Global Leadership Program (GLP)
The Gala Dinner was held in conjunction with the delivery of the new GLP course through the University of Virginia’s Darden School Foundation. The first delivery, Strategic Data-Driven Business Leadership, was a two-day Executive Education program that focused on quantitative information, analytics and design thinking to promote superior strategic insights, enduring customer relationships, the development of iconic brands and the delivery of peak performance.

The second GLP course, Critical Thinking, Intuition and Innovation, will be held on July 15-16 in conjunction with GBTA Convention. The third GLP course, Enterprise Leadership, will be held September 10-12 in Minneapolis and the final course, Finance for Non-Financial Executives, will be held November 12-14 in Chicago. For more information, or to register, please click here.

The GLP Designation Program Kick-off  will be held on July 15-16 at Convention.

Online Education
We have already delivered over 20 webinars and it’s only May! View the calendar of upcoming webinars and visit the GBTA Hub to view archived webinars.

Education at Convention
In addition to more than 80 education sessions offered at Convention, you will have the opportunity to take the Fundamentals of Business Travel Management and Advanced Principles of Business Travel Management courses.

GBTA will also be launching a new program highlighting our GBTA Tools and Resources, with demonstrations of our various RFPs, reports and benchmark and assessment tools.

Global Education
GBTA continues to offer on-going education in all regions of the world. It amazes me that we are so prolific in our offerings and opportunities. We offer everything a business travel professional needs and wants. Consider the great work being done in India.

We have already conducted 3 sessions of our Business Travel Workshop Series in Mumbai, Bangalore, and Gurgaon. We will be offering two other sessions in India in the coming weeks in response to the great demand we are seeing in the country. We have recently announced two new conferences there as well—the first in New Delhi on August 18 and the second in Mumbai on October 6th.

I encourage each of you to take advantage of the many, many educational opportunities provided by GBTA. You will benefit greatly from your time and effort.