Chief Executive – Joe Araullo

TravelManagers highly successful 2011 conference and awards evening wasn’t even over and suppliers were vocally offering support to hold it overseas in 2012. Both Tourism Fiji and Singapore Airlines independently and publicly invited TravelManagers to hold next year’s conference and awards in Singapore and Fiji respectively also offering assistance to facilitate this. Mr. Araullo says it shows the depth of the relationships they have with their suppliers and Government tourism organizations.

“It’s a fantastic endorsement of the relationships we have, that two of them would spontaneously offer support to assist us with having our annual conference somewhere international next year. I believe it’s a great example of how much they recognize not only the distribution reach and depth of TravelManagers but how high calibre our personal travel managers are and how effective they are when it comes to sales and return on investment.”

Mr. Araullo says the reaction to both Fiji and Singapore for 2012 was met with huge responses from the attendees.

“There was an immense amount of cheering and clapping when I reaffirmed these possibilities and suggested that our personal travel managers ensure that their passports were up to date. At this stage we haven’t made a decision on the destination but I’ve no doubt you’ll hear our personal travel managers cheer across Australia from excitement when we do.”
Mr. Araullo says that there had been an assumption that travel perks such as conferences, awards and educationals don’t exist in the personal travel manager sector.
“This couldn’t be further from the truth. TravelManagers’ relationships with its suppliers are very strong to the point we have a number of exclusive arrangements solely for TravelManagers, which in turn our personal travel managers benefit from immensely.”
Mr. Araullo believes the personal travel manager business model has really come of age.
“You only need to look at the recent evidence of the focus on the model by The Australian and the fact that 40 percent of the Avis Scholarship of Excellence finalists and the overall winner was a mobile consultant. It’s really coming into its own and 2012 will no doubt be another huge year for us.”