Daily News Brief - March 16, 2021 - Global Business Travel Association

Check-in with Suzanne

Hi Global Colleagues:

I’m “checking in” today, full of anticipation as I look forward to my first official Member Listening Tour session… kicking off today with session #1 in Europe. Thoughtful Q&A prompted by your write-in questions and a conversation moderated by Mark Cuschieri today will set the tone for the rest of the sessions in our series this month. (Register for next week’s US east coast region session here). I can’t wait to hear from you!

What we discuss today will be added to the growing pile of learnings from eloquent member and sponsor conversations which I’ve already had in my first 3 weeks as CEO… as well as from the ten hours of GBTA-ACTE Project Unite focus group sessions (whose summary of learnings we will be releasing soon):

Members and sponsors want GBTA to mind the lessons of our past – but to focus intently on the future by improving our Core… driving change and transparency along the way. If we do this well, it will be evident through a recovering industry, a healthy two-way marketplace, better learning, and smarter networking.
Volunteerism is alive and well – with a passion! I’m in awe as individual members give hundreds of collective hours for governance reviews, education programming, committees/standards, innovation exploration, and local/regional chapter programming.
Our industry needs a strong(er) collective voice. There continues to be a huge need for organized government/policy advocacy at a national and international level.
The association – and industry – are going through a reset. We will come back better, with stronger guardrails to guide us.
Convention in Orlando in July is on everyone’s mind as an important step toward that recovery and reset. As we start to measure attendee sentiment to attend in person or virtually, I am hearing of buyers who are vaccinated and eager to see what suppliers, travel management companies, and tech entrepreneurs have been working on – and how to get their travelers safely and successfully back out there. (Please watch for upcoming and regular flash surveys from GBTA so we can use the best available data to plan our event wisely.)

Business travel’s coming back “better” was the topic of my conversation with New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo in his opinion piece that was published late last week.

As I close out this week, I just wanted to make sure you’d seen the news that my home town, New York City, opens for quarantine-free visits beginning on April 1 – which is an amazing milestone after this great city-of-the-world saw some of the worst of the worst a year ago at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. The news has sparked a lot of joy for many I know who want to get back to work here as tourism and business travel returns. And for all of us, it’s a sign that normal is getting closer, for all to enjoy very soon. But we also need to remind ourselves to maintain public health diligence so that these hard-fought returns aren’t eroded by upturns in COVID. Vigilance is key – we need to keep mitigating risk, even as we cannot completely eliminate it.

Daily News Brief – March 16, 2021

Check-in with Suzanne

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