The
Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) announced the closing
keynote speaker for the GBTA Europe Conference 2012 being held in
Budapest on September 19th – 21st 2012.
The
conference will focus on aspects of globalisation and customised
service delivery as well as an insight into industry affairs and
their impact on professional travel management.
Michael
Gates, Vice Chairman of Richard Lewis Communications, and associate
fellow of Said Business School, the University of Oxford, will talk
to the conference audience about cultural variance and how to work
when cultures collide. Mr. Gates was a Scholar of St. Catherine’s
College Oxford, where he gained an MA in English Language and
Literature. He worked for five years in radio before moving to
Finland where he helped establish the Finnish office of Richard Lewis
Communications, which provides cross-cultural, communication skills
and business language training world-wide.
His
clients have included Nokia, Microsoft, the World Bank, Duke Fuqua
Business School, Rolls-Royce, the University of Oxford, and the
Central Eurasian Leadership Academy. He is a board member of the
Finnish-British Trade Association, and Director of Operations of The
English-Speaking Union of Finland.
He
has published numerous articles and chapters in books on
cross-cultural topics, including in The Telegraph, La Tribune, People
Management, and Management Next, the leading Indian magazine for
senior executives.
Talking
about the decision to appoint a cultural speaker as the keynote, Paul
Tilstone, Managing Director of GBTA Europe said ”When looking at
the conference theme of customisation and personalisation it is clear
that the impact of cultural variance is key in an increasingly global
world. Michael and his organisation will take us through an
insightful and entertaining perspective on how to navigate the
difficult world of cultural variance and we felt this was a memorable
and valuable way for us to end our conference.”
Other
confirmed speakers at the conference include Jan Sturesson - Partner
and Global Industry Leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers, Aleksander
Popovich - SVP Industry Distribution and Financial Services at IATA,
Joe Bates - Senior Director of Research at GBTA Foundation, Gillian
Gibson - Chief Marketing Officer at Travelport, Caroline Strachan -
Global Commercial Leader for AstraZeneca Travel Service, Priska
Schmidli - Executive Director of Global Travel Sourcing for UBS and
Didier Scaillet - Chief Development Officer at Meetings Professional
International (MPI).
Full
details of the conference programme with the theme of “Customisation
and Personalisation” can be found at www.gbta.org/europeconference.
