At the recent ITMC Summit in Fujairah we had an excellent line-up of speakers and informative sessions over the three days.
One of the sessions was ‘When things go wrong – Duty of Care’, led by Richard Savva. Duty of Care is a very current topic and something that all TMCs should be cognisant of to help guide clients to create a more effective travel policy with their employees’ safety and wellbeing at the heart of it.
This was not the usual ‘let a third party deal with it’ session. Richard led delegates through a very interactive 45 minutes ensuring that we, as TMCs, can add value to the client in times of mishap.
Richard advised that we must show and deliver added value to clients. In the event of a disaster, or even multitude of disasters, we looked at how we demonstrate to clients that we understand the challenges faced by their travellers, travel manager, CEO, CFO, IT department and other key stakeholders. The session involved the delegates being split into groups and each person given one of the previous roles within an organisation. Richard then played out scenarios of potential ‘things going wrong’ on a traveller’s business trip. Each of the delegates was asked how the employee in their role should deal with the event.
The session was really collaborative, and delegates went away with ideas on how to use this knowledge for meetings with clients and prospects to differentiate ourselves from our competitors.