Corporate Traveller has launched a dedicated Meetings and Events offering in the UK in response to growing demand from small and medium-sized businesses for support with travel to business events.
The SME-focused corporate travel brand, part of Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG), is expanding its existing venue sourcing and group travel capabilities to include dedicated event planning, creative production and onsite delivery.
The launch comes as meetings and events account for a growing share of business travel activity. According to research from Corporate Traveller, 40% of UK businesses expect their meetings and events spend to increase over the next year, while 38% are already allocating more than half of their total travel budget to meetings and events.
The research also found that 70% of UK businesses cite conferences and events as a main reason their people travel, making it the biggest driver of corporate travel among those surveyed.
Corporate Traveller said the new offering is aimed particularly at SMEs where responsibility for organising events can often fall to executive assistants, office managers, HR or marketing teams without dedicated event planning resources.
The service comprises two core offerings. Managed Meetings caters for gatherings of 10 to 200 attendees and includes venue sourcing, rooming lists, AV coordination and food and beverage planning.
Event Management provides an end-to-end service for larger events of 75 or more delegates, covering pre-event planning and risk mitigation through to onsite delivery, group travel coordination and post-event reporting.
The service will be delivered by a specialist Meetings and Events team within Corporate Traveller, rather than operating as a separate agency, giving customers access to event expertise alongside the brand’s existing travel management services. It will also draw on FCTG’s global buying power to provide access to negotiated rates and room blocks.
The team already has experience delivering executive leadership conferences, global summits, incentive trips, product launches, staff celebrations and client events in the UK and internationally, including events for more than 500 delegates.
“Events have become the single biggest reason our customers travel, and this research shows real growth ahead, but the businesses driving that growth aren’t always resourced to manage it,” said Bonnie Smith, head of Corporate Traveller UK.
“Rather than asking customers to bring in a separate agency, we’ve built this offering around the same relationship they already trust us for on travel.
“As events keep growing as a share of spend, we see this becoming a core part of how we support UK businesses, giving smaller organisations the kind of dedicated delivery that’s traditionally only been available to much bigger ones.”