ACTE Press Release

Immediate Release!

ACTE Names Recipient of ACTE Distinguished Fellow Award

(Alexandria, Va., USA, June 13, 2001) The Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) announced today the first recipient of the ACTE Distinguished Fellow award in 2001. The award was presented to Scott Gillespie, principal of Travel Analytics, a leading consulting firm. Scott received the highest overall session ranking from attendee evaluations for an education session entitled, "Supplier Survival: Selling Effectively into the Strategic Sourcing Environment" which he presented during the ACTE 2001Global Spring Conference in April held in Tampa, FL. Nearly 200 attendees from the supplier ranks attended this session. Greeley Koch, ACTE's vice president of education remarked, "Scott made a tremendous contribution to the success of this ACTE conference. He presented two additional sessions on the topic of "Strategic Sourcing" that scored very high-two out of three conference attendees chose to attend one of Scott's sessions at this conference."

"This is a terrific honor," said Gillespie. ACTE has such a strong reputation for delivering great education sessions. I'm glad this session was so well received, and I'm really pleased to have been selected from the many outstanding presenters that were in Tampa."

In the session that garnered him the award, Scott emphasized the critical selling implications for travel suppliers who negotiate with buyers who use strategic sourcing principles. Gillespie points out that sellers need to re-frame their value propositions in ways that are consistent with the decision processes employed by corporate buyers today.

Many of the subjective comments from attendee evaluations described the education session as "…great take home value for my sales team," "honest evaluation of RFP development" and "best session so far."

The ACTE Distinguished Fellow award was established in 2000 to recognize excellence in business travel industry education. Recipients are determined through session evaluations submitted by attendees to the ACTE Global Conferences. The next ACTE Distinguished Fellow award will be conferred following the next global conference in Munich, Germany, 28-30 October 2001.

Founded in 1988, the Association of Corporate Travel Executives is the only organization wholly dedicated to the science of business travel management with an international constituency. ACTE membership totals more than 2,400, including entities in Asia, Europe, Canada and the United States. The organization is headquartered in Alexandria, Va., and its web site is www.acte.org.