The Advantage Travel Partnership has appointed Guy Snelgar to the position of Global Business Travel Director.

He joins from Barndello, a consultancy he set up in September 2019 to support corporations, travel management companies and technology suppliers with strategic initiatives around travel programme improvements and implementation.

Prior to this he held senior roles with Travelport, Getthere (part of Sabre Holdings), Diners Club and Amadeus.

Advantage Travel Partnership CEO Julia Lo Bue-Said said Guy will ‘be a driving force behind our ambitious growth plans for this important part of our business’.

She added: “Business travel accounts for over 50% of our members’ annual turnover, to the tune of £3 billion per annum, and Guy’s extensive background and understanding of the industry, coupled with his vast knowledge of travel-related technology, will make him a real asset to the business, and help us deliver even greater value to our members as we continue to invest significantly in our commercial products and services.”

Guy’s appointment was announced at the consortium’s conference in Madeira at the weekend, where members also heard Advantage is investing in new technology to make life easier for agents.

Advantage is replacing its 20-year-old supplier payments system CAPS (the Central Advantage Payments System) with a new settlement platform developed by Travel Ledger. It will go live this week.

Advantage Operations Director Paul Nunn said: “Moving CAPS from its legacy platform to modern tech will add no end of value in speeding up members’ supplier payments and reconciliation processes and ultimately free up valuable time for them to focus more on sales and customer service.”

Advantage has also partnered with Vertical Systems and will be rolling out Vertical’s new ‘V’ suite of products to new and existing Advantage Managed Service (AMS) Leisure members over the course the next 12 months.

And the consortia is working on an ATOLPlus scheme for agents who dynamically package holidays.

Meanwhile, agent members have been urged to take part in the Join the Claim class action brought by legal firm Harcus Parker on behalf of merchants to get money back from Mastercard and Visa for what they consider to be overcharged Merchant Service Charges in relation to the processing of corporate/commercial cards, and consumer cards used by overseas visitors. 

The class action is open to all businesses that accept these card payments. Register interest here.