Agents must plan carefully to get the most out of two events

The Business Travel Show London takes place in just over a week alongside the inaugural Travel Technology Show, and with both offering extensive seminar programmes, visitors will be spoilt for choice. Agents attending the events will need to plan their timetables carefully in order to dip into seminars at both events and fit in meetings with exhibitors. Both are taking place at London Olympia on 3-5 Febuary (3 & 4 for Travel Technology Show). Highlights of the Business Travel Show training and masterclass programme include two sessions examining the future for business travel at 10am and 11.15am on Tuesday 3 February. Speakers for the first event include the Institute of Travel Management chairman, Tom Stone and TQ3 chief operating officer, Toby Joseph. An event held later that day at 11.45am tackles an issue raised by TravelMole this week, of the relationship between agents and no-frills carriers. Speaking at the event is BA head of UK and Ireland sales, Tiffany Hall and Flybe sales director, Marshall Barrand. Sessions cost £25 in advance or £35 on the door. For the full conference programme covering three days go to www.businesstravelshow.com. The website also has a function to allow visitors to the show to book meetings with exhibitors. The Travel Technology Show is running seminars on Tuesday 3 and Wednesday 4 February. There are 16 one-hour sessions which cost £25 each but can be booked in advance for £15. It will be interesting to see whether the session dealing with online dynamic self packaging reaches similar conclusions as this week’s CIMTIG debate, bearing in mind that the participating speakers come from different commercial backgrounds. The panel is Steve Perillo, managing director of Perillo Tours, Rakesh Mishra, chief executive of HyperTech Solutions and Vic Darvey, executive director OTC. Another popular debate will be the session covering the broad topic of multiple distribution for tour operators. The panel includes David Cockerton, managing director of Seligo and Mark Bradbury, director business development of RWA. For details of the full programme and how to register, go to www.traveltechnologyshow.com. Anyone thinking of visiting both shows needs to register for them separately. It is free to register online for both events, and people registering for the Business Travel Show by 30 January save £10 on training and masterclass sessions and get a free emergency mobile phone charger.