“We are for long here!”: ACTE has come to Poland
The first ACTE Poland educational conference that was held in Warsaw Marriott on December 7 gathered more than 60 business travel experts. About 70% of participants were corporate buyers of travel services. They included representatives of such companies as BGZ, BNP Paribas, British American Tobacco Trading Poland, Kulczyk Holdings, Luxoft Poland, Oriflame Poland, Polish Olympic Committee, PwC Polska, Syncron Poland and other. General partner of the event was Travelport, the leading commercial travel platform.
The meeting was devoted to special aspects of business travel management in Polish companies and the value of travel policy, as well as to the use of technologies in the travel industry. Discussion moderator was Caroline Allen, regional ACTE director in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
“This educational conference is ACTE`s debut of the year and a significant event for us. First of all, it demonstrates expansion of the association in the world and the demand for our approach to business travel management on the part of progressively-minded travel managers”, Greely Koch, ACTE executive director said. “Second, our partner, ACTE Poland, will help us establish constant presence in the region. We are for long here!”
“As it has highly estimated our successful experience in the launch of ABT-ACTE Russia, ACTE Global has offered us to expand it to the countries of Eastern Europe, where the global Association of corporate travel executives has only a few own activities”, chairman of the Russian Association of Business Travel Vadim Zelenski said. “ACTE Poland is a non-commercial Polish organization managed by ABT-ACTE Russia. Both associations will follow single standards”.
Next year ACTE Poland plans to hold four events: three educational sessions that are likely to be held in Polish, and a global ACTE Forum – like the one that is held in Moscow every year. “Besides, we are going to form a supervisory board with the participation of Polish corporate buyers and industry experts who will participate in the events as moderators”, Mr Zelenski added.
He also explained that at the moment ACTE Global had an opportunity to hold forums in the regions only once a year, and experts usually presented their global views of business travel market development trends at those events. However, industry experts in every country are interested in their colleagues` local experience as well, special features of the local market and the basics of travel management. The “branch” ACTE Regional, represented by ABT-ACTE Russia and ACTE Poland is meant to fill these gaps. And we are planning to move forward, be it Middle East – Dubai, Abu-Dhabi, or Europe – the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary. To move where there are no events of local business travel associations at present, but the market needs them already”, Mr Zelenski noted.
Natalia Travova