AMERICAN Express Global Business Travel (GBT) has appointed Theodore Lau as vice president and general manager, ASEAN and entrusted him with the company’s commercial operations across the South-east Asia region.

Lau joins GBT from Dentsu Aegis Media where he was CFO, South-East Asia, and was responsible for all financial, commercial and operational matters within the region during the integration between Dentsu and Aegis Media.

Prior to that, he worked with Ogilvy & Mather for 16 years, where he held a number of leadership positions.

Lau is based in Singapore.

JUST over a year since the opening of its Event Centre, the Gold Coast Turf Club has announced plans to build a hotel onsite as part of the organisation’s 2025 vision.

Featuring some 200 rooms of which four levels are corporate suites, the hotel is part of a strategic plan that Dale St George, CEO of the Gold Coast Turf Club, said he had been working on with the board over the last six months.

Speaking to TTGmice e-Weekly, St George said: “Racing is racing. It goes through its ups and downs. There has to be other streams of income. As well as a hotel, we’re looking at a tavern, some retail space and other development opportunities.”

Currently, a memorandum of understanding has been signed with a neighbouring landowner and preliminary drawings of the hotel have also been done. It occupies prime real estate alongside the straight of the racetrack next to the Event Centre.

St George said the organisation hopes to have hotel plans ready for Council by the end of the year, and ideally a July 2018 opening.

“We sit between Surfers Paradise and Broadbeach, and we need to engage the tourist population by having a hotel, and the corporate market by providing meeting facilities which are already in place. Without accommodation, it is difficult,” he elaborated.

Meanwhile, St George said the Event Centre, which opened in March 2015, was “slowly building” its momentum.

“I’d like to see it running at 65 per cent occupancy. We’re looking at A$2 million (US$1.52 million) turnover for the events space alone.”

AIRBNB’s new partnerships with global TMCs, American Express Global Business Travel (GBT), BCD Travel and Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT), will bring its content to a greater audience of corporate travellers while satisfying corporate duty of care requirements.

With GBT, the partnership will first allow individual travellers of GBT clients to book Airbnb accommodation on Airbnb.com using a corporate email address. In the coming weeks, GBT and Airbnb will integrate Airbnb booking information into GBT’s reporting platform, “enabling corporate reporting and traveller tracking which supports duty of care responsibilities”, explained a GBT spokesperson.

This arrangement will go live in the US in the next few weeks, allowing all GBT clients there to book Airbnb content worldwide, before expanding it to markets elsewhere later this year.

With BCD Travel, which has an existing partnership with Airbnb, Airbnb data will be integrated into BCD Travel’s DecisionSource business intelligence and security solution. This will allow BCD Travel’s clients to interact with maps and detailed reports in real-time and bring Airbnb accommodation bookings into view for managed travel.

With CWT, Airbnb for Business content will be made available to its clients, allowing travellers more options and flexibility as well as a highly personalised itinerary.

While post-booking security measures are in place, the TMCs will not be able to guide clients in making a safe Airbnb accommodation choice – one of the concerns among corporate travel managers who have rejected sharing economy accommodation options.

In response to TTGmice e-Weekly’s question on this aspect of security measures, Suzanne Lee, spokesperson with BCD Travel, Asia-Pacific, said: “DecisionSource does not provide risk assessment for individual Airbnb properties (just as) it does not provide individual risk assessment of hotel properties. But it does help companies with travellers staying at Airbnb accommodations by tracking them and alerting them when an incident takes place in their neighbourhood so companies can communicate with them as necessary.”

The GBT spokesperson, too, explained that “travellers and their respective employers will continue to decide the type of accommodation that is most suitable for their needs, and determine their policies accordingly”.

However, he added that travellers can look out for Airbnb’s Business Travel Ready options.

Such properties have five stars for at least 60 per cent of reviews; have hosts that respond to 90 per cent of booking requests within 24 hours and do not cancel confirmed reservations within a week of the check-in date; provide 24-hour check-in; offer business amenities such as Wi-Fi, laptop-friendly workspace, etc; and are an entire home or apartment.