The Interview: Simone Buckley

In the event the job advert was too good to ignore. The UK and Ireland Institute of Travel and Meetings (ITM) was looking for a new ceo. It was a massive task to follow in the footsteps of the outgoing  boss Paul Tilstone. In six energetic years hehad transformed the organisation into one with a real voice and significant clout in the business travel industry.

But Simone Buckley, a veteran of 18 years in business travel, saw too many synergies between the work of her consultancy and the job of ITM’s ceo to resist. It was, she said, a “once in a lifetime chance.”

“As you know, I have always had a passion to help the buyers to optimise their programmes. I looked at the specifications for this role and I saw so many synergies between Bouda ( her consultancy)and ITM,” she said.     

“It was like the reason we (she and her colleague Clare Murphy) started Bouda to help grow the relationship between buyers and suppliers. This was a chance to continue this evolution at ITM. There are lots of ideas at Bouda which will fit in at ITM.”

Buckley’s career in the industry started with the global TMCTravel Management Company: An agency which manages business travel for a company. Carlson Wagonlit Travel where she rose to be sales director before leavingto take over as managing directro at the independent agency Capita Business Travel.

Just under two years ago she and Murphy set up Bouda to put into practice their ideas of how to work more closely with both suppliers and buyers so each got a better deal.

It is these ideas she plans to put into practice on a much wider scale as boss of ITM, an organisation which formerly almost solely represented travel managers but whose 1000 members are now more equally divided between suppliers and buyers, including procurement specialists. 

But while bubbling with both ideas and enthusiasm for the new role which she formally takes up on Janaury 1, she is also approaching the challenge with a measureof caution.

“I need to get my feet under the table at ITM to understand better what needs to be done. The objective is to carry on involving ITM in the industry through the next generation. I  have a real passion for suppliers and buyers working together to get the best solution.

“The buyers must always be clear about what they are buying so I want to make sure there is the right solution to this through the right relationship. I want both sides to be open and honest and that is what the ITM is about: bringing the two sides together to show what is on offer and to see what the customer  wants and needs. I want to faciltiate that,” Buckley said.

But she plans a softly softly approach from now until January, months during which she hopes to speak to as many suppliers and buyers, old ITM members and new ones to see what both sides want. The feedback from this exercise, she said, will provide her with an insight into how to proceed in her first weeks and months in office.

“I absolutely want much more of a partnership between buyers and suppliers. Jamie Hindhaugh (the current chair of ITM) has talked a lot recently about parity. We have to make it more of a partnership. We can then make the ITM more of an industry body,” she said.

In an industry which does not always speak with one voice, this would be a positive advance. There are also more signs that ITM and the Guild of Travel Management Companies (GTMCGuild of Travel Management Companies), which represents the travel management companies, are ready to work more closely together.

Hindhaugh and Anne Godfrey, the Guild’s ceo, had long meeting  together at the GBTAGlobal Business Travel Association: formerly the NBTA (National Business Travel Association) and renamed in February 2011. It provides its members (business travel management professionals) with education and information conference in Denver this summer and both sides talk warmly of wanting to work more closely together.

Buckley is in an ideal position to push this. Having worked for CWT and Capita, she knows the industry from the agents’s side and was also once a member of the GTMC  board. It may be significant that Godfrey was the first person she phoned after her appointment was announced.

But these are early days and Buckley understandably does not want to read too much into these initial contacts.

 The same goes for ITM and GBTA Europe.Agian she is understandably cautious of ITM’s future role  but after the GBTA’s conference last week in Noordwijk, the Netherlands where ITM played a leading role, she wants the “storng and very positive relationship” to continue.

Buckely said it was an emotional wrench to leave Bouda. “It was a really hard cvhoice. But this is a once in a lifetime opportunoity. These roles do not come along too often,” Buckley said. She seems set to grab it with both hands.