SUMMARY: THE 1997 SURVEY OF ACTE MEMBERS

The results are in and ACTE members gave high marks to the organization. Here are some highlights from the report.

Top ACTE benefit: networking and advanced education opportunities, mentioned by 84% and 75% of respondents respectively.
What exactly does networking mean to ACTE members? Keeping up with industry trends was the number one concern (mentioned by 85% of respondents), followed closely by exchanging best practices knowledge (84%), building business alliances/partnerships (83%), comparing travel programs/sales practices (67%), making senior level contacts (57%), and making contacts to increase negotiating leverage (50%).
Single most valuable program or service: ACTE's Annual Conference, mentioned by nearly three quarters (71%) of respondents. Regional forums, which are growing in number this year, are also rated beneficial by nearly half of members (42%). Seventy-one percent say they apply what they've gained from ACTE directly to their positions.
How do ACTE seminars stack up against other training sources? Very well indeed; 60% said that ACTE's training is better than what they receive from other sources.
What do ACTE members want to see from future ACTE training events? About two thirds (64%) believe ACTE should focus its training on new products, trends and industry issues; specifically technology, benchmarking, management, planning/budgeting and communication. However, a significant percentage believe ACTE should also provide core competency training.
What's biggest on the wish list? A database of benchmarking information was mentioned by 47% of respondents, followed by a technology conference (40%), a resource library (also 40%), job listings (34%) speaker's bureau (28%), educational videocassettes (28%) and a trade show (21%.). [Incidentally, ACTE's new Web site offers an on-line resource library and job listings.]
Something to keep in mind: 63% say ACTE should develop a certification program.

Snapshot of respondents:

• 47% are travel managers/purchasers; 13% travel agencies; 30% travel suppliers, and 11% checked other -- a category that includes consultants, educators and journalists.

• More than half of members (51%) have been in the travel industry for 10 years or more.

• The majority (67%) have been ACTE members for 1-3 years.

• The most-mentioned job responsibility was managing business travel costs (71%), followed by selecting or recommending business travel suppliers (66%) and setting corporate policies (63%). More than a third (39%) are involved in meeting planning for their companies; 21% are involved with incentive travel.

• Nearly half (42%) of respondents said that they spend all of their time on corporate travel. A quarter (27%) spend more than 75% of their time on it.

• Most respondents work for fairly large companies; 31% work for companies with more than 20,000 employees; 37% work for companies with annual revenue of $1B or higher.

• Most, 70% of members are between the ages of 36 and 55, more than half have graduated from college, and 19% had graduate degrees.

• As for wages, the majority (34%) made between $51-75K per year; 29% made $76-100K, and a fortunate 6% made more than $150K, a comfortable margin over the 2% who made less than 30K.

Results were based on 215 responses to hard-copy surveys sent to 1,400 ACTE members world-wide. Respondents gave their answers via Marriott's Confer-Net facility.