CORTAS, an association for travel buyers of Dutch-based multi-nationals, celebrated its tenth anniversary last year with a formal tie up with the Association of Corporate Travel Executives. ABTN looks at how the link is working.
When CORTAS elected Herman Mensink, a leading figure in European business travel, as its chairman last July, there was a feeling that big developments were ahead. CORTAS is an elite organisation - there is a waiting list to join - of the travel buyers from multi-nationals based in the Netherlands.
Founded in 1998, it was by last year looking at ways to expand and the obvious answer seemed to be to "go international."
Back in 1998 Mr Mensink was travel manager at Philips and one of three founder members of the association along with Shell and the Dutch government's travel department. He has since served as ACTE's regional director for Europe and more recently a lecturer on aviation economics and business travel management at NHTV University of Applied Science in the Netherlands.
His long term connection with ACTE led him down another avenue - a tie up between the two associations. This would give CORTAS the international presence it wanted while ACTE was delighted to have close ties with a highly respected group.
"We did not want just to focus on the Dutch market. We wanted more international links for our members. But when we discussed going international, we saw that that was not the way as it would have required a totally new structure," Mr Mensink said.
"We felt we could bring specific expertise to ACTE while it could give us an international perspective."
The move fitted perfectly into ACTE's plans. Christine Dunton-Tinnus, its regional director for Western, Southern and West Central Europe, said there were three pillars to its strategy in Europe: co-operation with regional business travel associations, the promotion of travel manager country champions in each country and lobbying bodies like the EC and European Parliament.
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| Herman Mensink |
ACTE already had tie ups with the Finnish Business Travel Association, the Belgian Association of Travel Management, Germany's VDR and the AEGVE in Spain. A link with CORTAS would add to this growing group which was strengthening the Association in the area many critics said was its weakest: its grass root support in European countries.
The partnership was announced at ACTE's global education conference in Rome last October and the fruits on display for the first time at the ACTE/CORTAS executive forum in Amsterdam last month.
Neither side has much doubt that it is proving beneficial to each side. The main sessions, outside the equally important networking, were in-depth looks at the aviation industry and travel management/procurement (see ABTN Analysis: May 7). The attendance of about 100 was noticeably higher than the forum in 2008.
Mr Mensink said the expertise of CORTAS members, all of whom handle either European or global travel programmes involving hundred of millions of pounds each year, was now available on an international scale through ACTE.
CORTAS members regularly produce White Papers, benchmarking studies and standard RFPs - the companies which pay the not insubstantial membership fee expect a return on their investment - which would now be available to ACTE.
One CORTAS member has also joined ACTE's education committee to help draw up the agenda for the Association's next global education conference in Europe in Prague in October.
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| Christine Dunton-Tinnus |
Ms Dunton-Tinnus said: "The new partnership between ACTE and CORTAS is an integral part of our holistic approach in Europe. ACTE is a global association but with a strong focus and membership and presence in the European markets."
The tie also with the CORTAS expertise also serves ACTE's wish to "provide...exceptional education to the industry by using the synergy of global and regional leadership within the market.
"ACTE brings global trends and cross benchmark from other countries to the region and our regional partners provide us with the local market knowledge, network and stakeholder relationships and a very important aspect which is often neglected by other organizations, the intercultural competencies which are one core success factor for our events and for our regional work."
CORTAS and Mr Mensink are so far delighted. "We deal with bodies like KLM and large hotel chains but we have kept a low profile for ten years. In the past we have not been outspoken.
"But the group felt we were not giving enough back to the industry. We wanted to help others benefits form our expertise," he said.
www.acte.org [1]