Tom Otley, Editor Business Traveller - MICE Meet Up - Business Traveller

Tom Otley, Editor Business Traveller - MICE Meet Up, Business Traveller.

Tom Otley, Editor of Business Traveller magazine in London is interviewed by Michael Collins, MD & Founder TravelMedia.ie for MICE Industry series MICE Conversations.

Tom normally spends his time travelling, reviewing business hotels, airline seats and airport lounges. Business Traveller also run events for the business travel industry.

From the Business Traveller website: 'Business Traveller is the leading magazine for the frequent business traveller , with 14 editions worldwide — in the UK, US, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, China, France, Germany, Denmark, Hungary, Africa, Russia, Poland, Israel and India, as well as a number of websites.

Launched in the UK in 1976, Business Traveller has become the leading magazine around the world for the frequent corporate traveller. A consumer publication, it is aimed at entertaining business travellers, saving them money and making their travelling life easier. Each edition is packed with editorial on the latest news about airlines, airports, hotels and car rental.

Interview recorded Monday 29th March 2021. Disclaimer. Business Traveller magazine is a client of TravelMedia.ie. TravelMedia.ie manage the Business Traveller YouTube channel.


Video Transcript:
- So, hello Welcome to another MICE conversation session. My name is Michael Collins. I run TravelMedia.ie I'm based in Dublin normally and we run the Dublin MICE Meetup which is an outbound event for the MICE industry. Today, I'm talking to Tom Otley. Tom, you can see on the screen beside me here. Tom is the editor of Business Traveller magazine and Tom normally should travel more than I do Tom is based in London and therefore offers us a somewhat unique perspective. Obviously, Tom is not pure to the MICE industry but I think Tom will give us a very good perspective on what is happening. Tom is shaking his head. On business travel, let's say which is very much MICE. So Tom, how are you? Thank you for joining us. How has the last 12 months been for you working from home? I assume that is home at the background.

- It is, it is home, yeah, well, I mean there've been advantages, I suppose, working from home. I did a fair bit of it before when I wasn't travelling but obviously the big thing for all of us has just been the complete lack of travel and that's both transient business travel. So those short trips where you're just going for meetings but also all the big get togethers that were a part, I guess of everyone's calendar. So for, for someone like myself, that was an ITB The Big Travel Fair in March in Berlin. And that was proceeded by the Hotel Investment Conference. We had the Arabian Travel market, World travel market. So all of those sort of larger meetings and conferences and exhibitions and then all the smaller ones as well, which were were very important. They've all, well, they've all gone on to zoom, if they still exist.

- And I should probably warn everybody or flag the fact that we both agreed we'd wear or dress casual today. But Tom being Tom has a quirky sense of humour decided he would put on a shirt and tie. So thank you for that, Tom.

- Well, the top half, is in the quirky bit. It's what I'm wearing on the bottom half which is nothing at all. If it goes badly, I'm just going to move the camera.

- The other thing for the sake of clarity or transparency I should say that my company TravelMedia we work with Tom and Business Travel Magazine and we manage Tom's YouTube channel. So normally we would be editing Tom's content

- [Tom] Will this be on there or will it be on your YouTube channel?

- It'll be on the TravelMedia. Well we can put it up onto your one as well Tom, Why not.

- Let's see how it goes.

- Different audiences but I suppose that raises the question. And normally we will be editing content from when you were flying. So you would spend a lot of your time on the road, visiting hotels, visiting airports and travelling business class and reviewing the product. You've been unable to do that. So for most of us we've gone online but you have very much been able to do that. So what have you been doing from a business traveller perspective?