{ UNIGLOBE INTERVIEW }
“It’s about delivering the person to where they need to be in the best possible shape to do the best possible business for the company” it on a website that is not ours, there’s nothing we can do, as the control can’t be changed. “Most of our clients were back quickest in the ash crisis. Why? Because we knew what was going to happen. We knew when it was going to break and we knew where it was going to break. We’d already moved our clients back into the global air hub areas, so when the planes started flying again, our clients were the first home.” “Companies have a duty of care to make sure that their people don’t get in harm’s way, particularly today with precedents of corporate manslaughter. As a director of a company, you can be held responsible. If companies are booking travel themselves, they are taking a risk, as if anything goes wrong, one of the first
important relationships are reaping the benefits now.” John owns and runs a Uniglobe Preferred Travel, with offices in Brighton and London in Buckingham Gate in London (eight doors from the Palace), with 36 staff across the two sites, and is part of a worldwide network of more than 750 business travel management companies across 61 countries. Business is strong, testimony to the service and value that the business travellers receive. “We are now the second largest Uniglobe in the UK,” says John, “and it’s growing well.” So who travels with Uniglobe, and where do they go? “We’re transporting people all over the world: to Africa, the States, Canada, Asia Pacific region,
to Heathrow? They’re not going to build a bullet train because it would be a political minefield, and I’m told its been costed it at over £5 billion. So if you expand Gatwick, you’ve got to still transport that huge number of people between Gatwick to Heathrow. And that’s a problem that the review panel really must address. “London Heathrow has been losing ground for years to the hub airports on the continent. So what is a hub airport? It allows airlines to offer a comprehensive global network, transferring passengers so UK businesses have access to more direct destinations, at higher frequencies and lower prices. Due to the scarce capacity over the last 20 years Heathrow has fallen from number 1 in Europe to number 5 in terms
questions will be: ‘Did you use a professional to do this?’” “Perhaps in today’s slightly more risky world, businesses may well be asking themselves do we really need to travel in order to do business, couldn’t we just Skype our clients or use videoconferencing but the truth is it really isn’t the same as meeting your clients or prospective clients face-to-face, we have a saying “If you never meet face-to-face how will you ever see eye to eye?” It’s as simple as that. “If you don’t make the effort to meet your client, but your competitors do, who’s going to get the business? Similarly, if your competitor arrives ahead of you or arrives freshly pressed and awake after an overnight stay and you just get off the red eye plane, who is going to be in the best place to win the important contract? It’s about delivering the person to where they need to be in the best possible shape to do the best possible business for the company. A lot of people see travel as an expense or cost that has to be controlled. Of course you have to control costs. But it’s actually an investment. Travel is an investment. And there’s been a lot of research done, which supports this. During the recent recession those companies that continued to travel to meet their clients and strengthen those
the UK, Europe and anywhere I have missed out. There are all kind of reasons to travel. It can be for sales or marketing, it can be transporting groups of delegates to a conference or a big company meeting through our “Flights for Groups” specialist logistical offering, or it can be journeys of business necessity. For instance we transport engineers or drillers for the oil and gas industry, who have to go where the oil or gas is. At the moment that means a lot of journeys in and out of Africa.” As a magazine we believe that the only choice when it comes to airport expansion is Gatwick (obviously!). The land is there, the disruption and environmental cost is lower, and it would be an amazing boost for the region. John has mixed views. “It’s a double-edged one for me. I live and work in the South East and do business in London. My heart wants to say Gatwick because they’ve got the space to expand, it’s going to be less disruption and a boost for business in the southeast, plus it’s on your doorstep. It would service well the business in the south-east. “However, if look at it from an airline’s position, what we need is a very strong hub airport. The big hub is Heathrow. If you expand Gatwick, how are you going to transport people from Gatwick
of destinations served and the number of UK regional cities it serves has fallen from 21 to 6. Heathrow has fallen behind its rivals in serving the growing BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economies. Adding capacity Heathrow would deliver more destinations, greater frequencies and fewer delays in the short term and make the UK a more competitive for investment particularly from emerging markets and enhance the productivity and connectivity in the longer term. “Currently Heathrow is running at 98.8 per cent capacity. If you ever circle over Heathrow on a clear day and you’re above the clouds, you can watch the airplanes popping one after the other above the clouds, it’s like a overcrowded motorway. Talking of crowded motorways, the M25 near Heathrow is hardly easy to navigate. “But without getting political the real problem is successive governments have not had an integrated coherent transport policy, from the sidelines it seems like the hot potato that nobody wants to grasp but without such a policy we will continue to muddle through, continue to lose ground to our European competitors and be laughed at by the rest of the civilised world. While we are on contentious issues, we are not far away from an election, which will be
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