base2stay London Hotel Offers Free Electric Cars To Guests

base2stay hotel in London's Kensington was one of the first to be praised for its green credentials.

And it is now pioneering an electric hire car programme for guests, after Boris Johnson's, the Mayor of 

London's, drive to see the city become ‘the electric capital of Europe'.

Guests will have up to four hours' free hire of an electric Citroen EV'ie throughout the summer. The car, which is supplied by eco-car rental firm Move About, can be re-charged for free at the hotel. It will carry up ot 5 guests and friends at up to 60mph and has a range of 75 miles between charges.

From October 1, the car will be hired out at £4 per hour, £20 for a half-day or £30 a day which is cheaper than bike hire for a family in the capital, says the hotel.

There are no congestion charges for electric cars in London and in many boroughs there is free or highly discounted parking.

http://www.base2stay.com

Qatar Airways announces six new routes

Qatar Airways plans to launch six new routes in October, to Europe and Asia.

From October 11, Qatar will fly to Phuket, the airline's second destination in Thailand. The flights will stop at Kuala Lumpur en route.

From November 1, the middle eastern carrier will start flights to Hanoi. The new route to Vietnam's capital will be the airline's second destination in the country, after Ho Chi Minh City.

Qatar Airways also plans to increase capacity on the existing Doha-Ho Chi Minh route, from four flights a week to daily services.

From November 24, the Doha-based airline will start a three times weekly service to Nice, Qatar's second destination after Paris.

In 2011, Qatar Airways plans to start flights into Romania. A Doha-Bucharest service is due to start on January 17, with the aircraft continuing onto Budapest after stopping in the Romanian capital.

Finally, from January 31, Qatar will operate five flights a week to Brussels.  

Akbar Al Baker, Qatar Airways' CEO, said: "Qatar Airways' track record to grow remains strong and solid.

"The airline is well positioned globally, focusing on a long term strategy that is forward thinking and not one to look back on.

"Budapest, Bucharest, Brussels, Nice, Hanoi and Phuket represent markets underserved so these are excellent opportunities for us to tap into."

Comment: Business travel and technology

Paul Robin, event director of Business Travel Market (BTM), which closed yesterday after two days of meetings and debate at London's ExceL exhibition centre, tells ABTN his views on technology and the business travel industry.

This year, we introduced more technology related sessions to BTM than ever before with a host of experienced panelists leading each session. The sessions highlighted how many companies are rapidly developing  travel technologies, however, there is a broad concern that some major corporates aren't moving fast enough. And where they are moving, they are thinking only of their own business needs, rather than those of their customers.

It's been a testing year for business travellers, not only with cuts to corporate and public sector budgets but dealing with unprecedented industry issues such as the ash cloud crisis. This event was an example of where technology combined with the human touch was essential to ensure that creative and efficient solutions were instigated to repatriate as many travellers as quickly as possible.

For this year's BTM we surveyed a number of business travel managers, corporate buyers and business travellers on how they personally used new technology whilst they were travelling.

Not surprisingly our results highlighted that of the companies surveyed 96% of them provide blackberries and smart phones at their business - really indicating how the mobile device is now needed much more than just texting or calling.

The growth of mobile technology has empowered business travellers to find information from almost any location. Travellers can now be more informed and therefore more decisive at the touch of a button or slide of a screen.

In particular, smart phones and blackberries, have proven to be indispensable to the business traveller and recent situations have really highlighted how useful they can be in an emergency. The flip-side of this, however, is that individuals can more easily divert from their company's agreed travel policy.

We felt it important to practice what we preach at this year's conference, and we were the first event in the UK to use the mobile meetings assistant (MMA) technology in communicating with the delegation of VIP hosted buyers, suppliers, travel managers, books and business travellers.

For the first time at a conference we told attendees to leave their mobile phones on, so they could hear about the latest updates, as well as meeting and session reminders. We were also able to use it to gain some meaningful feedback before during and after BTM.

The industry appears to be progressing quickly with new technologies, and personal technology in particular seems a great support to business travellers themselves. It was great to see this week how many key decision makers wanted to learn more about technology and how they could use and adapt it to their business.

Virgin to offer mobile phone access on A330s

Virgin will launch new seat products on its A330 aircraft due for delivery next year (see online news May 25), and the carrier has now confirmed that there will be mobile phone and email access on board.

Virgin will partner with Panasonic Avionics Corporation and Aeromobile to enable mobile phone calls, text messages and emails to be made onboard, as well as offering a new in-flight entertainment system featuring touchscreen navigation, the ability to make and view passenger ratings for programmes, a catalogue of up to 300 hours of entertainment, and the ability to create playlists.

Other features will include a inseat USB port in all classes, allowing passengers to play their own music, photos and documents through the IFE system, and ports for iPod and camera/camcorder play back, which will be available in premium economy and Upper Class initially, and rolled out to economy class later in 2011.

There will also be live news updates, an interactive map, destination videos, user generated reviews and recommendations, and instant messaging between seats.

In addition Virgin says it is working on introducing seatback e-readers to display digital newspapers and magazines, and enhanced connectivity features including internet access.

The carrier has ordered 10 A330 aircraft, with the first due to be delivered in February 2011.

BCD Agrees To Use Amadeus One Platform

BCD Travel on Thursday announced a letter of intent to use the Amadeus One platform as the foundation for a new agency desktop it plans to deploy to select agents in the United States next year. BCD is the largest agency to embrace Amadeus One, joining other early adopters Balboa Travel and launch client Travel Leaders.

Amadeus and BCD still are in discussions as to the scope of BCD's use of the new desktop and the degree of customization the travel management company will require. BCD, however, has decided that Amadeus One system would serve as the "baseline" for a new system that will replace tools "used by central service groups based in North America, such as BCD Travel's central fulfillment and after-hours teams."

For those agents, the new platform will replace a set of other tools that make up its largely homegrown desktop platform, BCD Travel senior vice president April Bridgeman said.

"I wouldn't say it's a majority of our agents by any stretch, but it is a rather large operation for us," Bridgeman said of the agents who will transition to the new system. "We are just in the early phases." BCD and Amadeus still must finalize the contract and build out the technology before getting it out to agents, she said.

"We're building it for the U.S. initially," said Vic Pynn, executive vice president of Amadeus Americas, "and BCD is going to decide if that's going to be 10 percent of their desktops or 90 or 100 percent. Right now, we're in the process of defining what they want for the future, where we start with this and what makes sense for BCD's business."

Depending on the level of customization and extent of deployment, Pynn said he expects BCD to take the system live in the first half of next year. Travel Leaders, meanwhile, is expected to be the first to go live with the Amadeus One platform, Pynn said, with piloting slated to begin in the back half of this year.

In addition to Balboa, BCD and Travel Leaders, Pynn said, "We have some very good discussions going with several others."

Amadeus and its global distribution system competitors for years have been developing the next generation  of agency workspaces that largely scrap the cryptic green-screen environment in favor of graphical user interfaces, while bringing more functionality to the point of sale.

Sabre this week unveiled the Sabre Red Workspace, while Travelport expects to launch its Universal Desktop this summer.

Companies must put ROI on travel costs – KDS

Companies must put a return on investment (ROI) price on the cost of business travel, IT company KDS said today.

Dominic O'Regan, its solutions consultancy director, said the total cost of a trip was calculated accurately and then weighed against the benefit of the trip to the company.

Speaking at the Business Travel Market in London, O'Regan said:  "Right now, when the economic pressures on every business are so intense, it is more important than ever before to avoid unnecessary - and unnecessarily expensive - travel.

"The first step in that process is to know the likely total cost of a trip before the travel plans are approved. Are you going to spend more travelling than you will generate when you arrive? I cannot stress enough the importance of ROI in modern business travel."

O'Regan said companies included air fares in their trip cost but left out items like TMS fees, lodge card spend and incidentals.

"You only realise the actual total cost of the trip after the event, by when it's too late to do anything.

"Perhaps you never truly realise the total trip cost at all. If you want to stop wasting money, you need comprehensive, reliable, easily-accessible and well-presented data from the very start of the travel management process," he said.

The first ever Forum of the French Users’ Club will be staged in Paris next week

The first ever Forum of the French Users’ Club will be staged in Paris next week.

Created from within the International Association of Francophone Convention Cities, AIVFC, the new club forms a bridge between French-speaking convention bureaus and their regular clients. Unlike most professional meetings between customers and providers, the Users’ Forum has been initiated by the clients themselves who are inviting their counterparts, the event organisers and others, to exchange ideas with them and AIVFC managers.

AIVFC President Françoise Muel, of Metz-Congrès, said: “This event, which involves all stakeholders in our industry, will establish productive synergies amongst us, encouraging reflection on the evolution of our constantly growing business. One of the major strengths of our network is the constant banking on the benefit of experience. The Users’ Club highlights this advantage, resulting in this very first Forum”.

The Forum will be held at the Palais des Congres de Versailles, Paris, on Thursday 24th June, and will comprise interactive workshops led by recognised experts on professional themes selected by the Club. Topics will include legal responsibilities of organisers, event catering and sustainable development. Delegates will also be able to attend one of a variety of roundtable discussions and visit an exhibition of AIVFC destinations.

Forecast Shows Manhattan Hotel Rates To Rise

Manhattan hotel rates will increase slightly this year and by much greater levels in the subsequent years, but it will still take several years for rates to reach 2008 levels, according to the 2010 Manhattan Hotel Market Overview, which HVS Global Hospitality Services and New York University's Tisch Center released this week.

HVS forecasts that year-over-year Manhattan hotel rates will be up 2.2 percent in 2010, by 7.9 percent in 2011 and by double-digit levels in the two years after that. Considering the 22.8 percent year-over-year drop in rates in 2009 reported by Smith Travel Research, however, Manhattan average daily rates will not pass the $300 threshold, where they were in 2008, until 2013, according to the forecast.

The forecast said Manhattan revenue per available room also would reach pre-recession levels by 2013.

The report also included a survey of 68 Manhattan hoteliers, in which more than half said they expected corporate rates to increase between 1 percent and 10 percent by the end of this year. Hoteliers were less bullish on group rates, however. Just under 30 percent said they expected group rates to remain level throughout the rest of the year, while only 10 percent said corporate rates would be flat.

Icelandic Ash Cloud Hangs Over Chicago Meeting

As Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano continued to pump flight-halting ash into European airspace, travel buyers and suppliers attending the Association of Corporate Travel Executives Global Education Conference brainstormed strategies to manage travel in the face of unprecedented disruptions.

"We've had several wars, massive terrorist threats, diseases and all kinds of things, but none of them even came close to the effect of a 3,000-year-old volcano," incoming ACTE president Chris Crowley said. "If it continues to grow, we will see a major effect on the cost of the airlines and the ability of the airlines to maintain certain routes."

During a press briefing at the conference, Crowley said the organization is preparing a white paper to "crystallize lessons learned" from the eruption. The research will look at ways travel managers can react to airport closings, methods of communicating with stranded travelers, criteria for when to open airspace and how to work as an industry to cover cost in such disruptions.

Recognized for her efforts in enhancing hotel rate-loading accuracy and using a mobile platform for traveler communications with ACTE's Advancing the Industry Award during the conference, Maria Chevalier, Johnson & Johnson's global director of travel and meetings services, led an interactive session on lessons learned in the aftermath of Eyjafjallajokull's ash, which will be used by ACTE and International SOS Assistance to create the white paper and a LinkedIn forum on the topic.

Chevalier noted that J&J had 1,100 stranded travelers during the April eruption, with a financial impact in the millions, while industry estimates put the cost of the first six days of the shutdown at $1.9 billion.

Sifting through the ashes of the disaster, session attendees talked about what worked when the skies didn't. Meeting at tables designated for discussing specific aspects of the crisis management process, there was a great deal of consensus. Preferred suppliers generally came through. While there were hotels that gouged, many others accommodated their guests beyond their original reservations. Credit card issuers raised limits to accommodate longer-than-usual stays. Security firms and travel management companies helped identify employee whereabouts and communicate the most effective strategies for addressing the situation.

Many companies found that the best strategy was to tell travelers to stay put, ensuring their safety and shelter. Many also found that frequent communications and multiple contact points were essential.

Of the things participants said didn't work, some cited gaps in TMC reporting and a high level of no-shows at airlines. Many cited call lines that couldn't support the volume, less visibility into the impact on their travelers over time and the fact that not every traveler carries communications devices with international capabilities.