American Express GBT expands messaging app, enhances mobile platform
American Express Global Business Travel (GBT) has expanded messaging capabilities and made enhancements to the Amex GBT Mobile platform. The move signals increased on-the-go options for travel managers and business travellers. The option to message with a GBT travel counsellor via the Amex GBT Mobile App has expanded to more than 24 countries where GBT has a proprietary presence. A new push notifi...
Leipzig stages indoor concert with 1,500 fans as part of Covid-19 experiment
Fifteen hundred music fans in Leipzig, Germany, attended a live rock concert by local singer Tim Bendzko, in the name of a scientific experiment designed to better understand how Covid-19 spreads at large events. Fluorescent hand sanitiser, face masks and contact trackers for transmitting the contact rates and distances of individual participants, were all laid on by researchers for the audience, ...
Penang International Travel Exchange goes virtual in October
The Penang International Travel Exchange (PITE), a programme owned by Penang Convention & Exhibition Bureau (PCEB), is going virtual with a digital show this year. PITE is Malaysia’s only homegrown business events tradeshow. The event will take place 14–16 October and the programme will offer B2B sessions in three streams, according to the market segment time zones. Thus, 9am-6pm on 14 O...
ICCA partners on biorisk programmes with global cleaning industry association
International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) is partnering with the Global Biorisk Advisory Council® (GBAC), a division of ISSA, the worldwide cleaning industry association, to bring essential business reopening resources to ICCA members. ICCA’s members include venues, tourism bureaus, airlines, and other event-related organisations and the new agreement, will see the association promo...
Western Australia offers delegate funding if business events ‘go local’
Business Events Perth has launched a new funding initiative, worth AUD$30 (US$21.55) per qualifying delegate, to encourage organisations to host local business events and help Western Australians safely meet again. Business Events Perth chief executive officer Gareth Martin said Western Australia’s business events industry had been severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic and funding was now ava...
Berlin to present BOCOM, a dive into the new experience of borderless communication
The question of how we want to work, communicate, network and learn in future will be explored on 3 September, via BOCOM, a hybrid multisite conference sponsored by the German Convention Bureau. The conference will attempt to find answers to questions of overcoming geographical, technological and subject boundaries. Organisers of ‘BOCOM – Experience Borderless Communication’ claim it a first of i...
Hard hit South African tourism to target support at SMEs and the marginalised
In a post on South Africa Tourism’s website 18 August, its CEO spoke about the need to place a stake on the marginalised in order to support the wider tourism sector. Indeed, South Africa has been one of the hardest hit countries by the Covid-19 pandemic and its tourism sector has been devastated. In a recent budget vote speech, minister of tourism, Ms Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane told Parliament that...
AIME brings in ‘virtual’ hosted buyers to its programme for 2021
Asia Pacific Incentives and Meetings Event (AIME) has launched its 2021 hosted buyer programme, including virtual buyers using a hybrid model. Physical hosted buyers will be welcomed at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC), 15-17 March 2021, and virtual hosted buyers via the online event platform 15-26 March. Organisers hope the 2021 show will bring together over 450 Australian a...
IBTM World reports new exhibitor sign ups as intense safety campaign for 2020 show continues
Organiser Reed Travel Exhibitions has announced “a raft of new exhibitors,” including Meliá Hotels International, Titanic Hotels, Ibiza Convention Bureau and Canary Islands for its IBTM World 2020, due still to take place in Barcelona 1-3 December and widely seen as an opportunity for the wider global industry to gather in person again. The task for organisers will clearly be to persuade corporate...
Swift downsizing positions CTM for recovery
Global business travel management agency Corporate Travel Management (CTM) has reported underlying earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of US$65m for the FY20 financial year. CTM management says the company’s rapid response to the impacts of Covid-19 has helped rationalise the cost base and maintain a strong liquidity position. There was an underlying net profit ...
ICCA call for board candidates and lines up AES Live in Singapore
The International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) is calling for candidates interested in standing for election for the following vacancies on its board of directors. The elections will take place at the ICCA General Assembly 2020: Presidency – one vacancy, as James Rees comes to the end of his two-year elected term, although he may stand for re-election. SECTORS Destination marketing &...
New president & CEO for Destination Canada
Canada’s minister of economic development and official languages, the Honourable Mélanie Joly, announced Marsha Walden (pictured) as new president and chief executive officer of the country’s destination promotion board internationally, Destination Canada. “We know the tremendous contribution of the tourism sector to our communities, large and small. It supports good jobs in rural areas, sma...