NEWLY appointed President of the American Chamber of Commerce of Jamaica (AMCHAM) Allison Peart has reiterated her organisation’s desire to continue providing a lead role as a partner for trade.

“We’re trying to push trade, we’re trying to push people investing and expanding their businesses, and travel is a main point to that,” Peart said following a Travel Forum hosted by AMCHAM at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, recently.

American-based airlines Delta, which has routes to a number of markets in which the Jamaican companies buy and sell, leveraged chances at cost efficiency for much of the presentation, with support from Prism Solutions.

“This type of forum brings to our members information they wouldn’t normally get. Because how many people can call Delta to tell them about the awards programme; how many people can say tell me how to reduce my travel or have one-on-one access with them?” said Peart, adding that it was fashioned to the needs of their partners.

“This type of seminar is helping our members with their needs. We ask our members, what are the things that you want done, what are the areas you need help with … and remember, we’re trying to partner with the globe, so if you can’t fly there, and you can’t look at the cost of flying there then it increases the difficulty,” she said.

The forum was told that, as is the case with individual travellers through advantage points for discounted airfares, corporate bodies benefit, too. Much of the information that drives that process is provided by Prism, whose data consolidation and software management system is utilised by airlines to draft contracts and forecast the performance of such deals, inclusive of appropriate discounts.

“The corporations then are using those contracts to create preferences within their traveller base and support those airlines by buying from those as preferred clients,” explained David Jaqua, vice-president, Prism.

“The data comes in quicker to the airlines, [and] the airlines can use the automation tools to create reports that are tiered specifically to the contract performance to get the answers that they need very quickly. They’re also able to aggregate the performance of all of their contracts so that they can manage the effectiveness of their sales organisations and how well their sales teams are performing within the airline,” he added.

“The airlines view corporate business, and corporate contracts as the most important component of their business and so they are always working with their corporations to make sure that they are the most preferred carrier that the corporations buy from.

“And so our services really allow the airlines to monitor those contracts to make sure the customers are getting the discounts that they require and that they are also able to tailor their networks to support the corporate buyers. A lot of the route decisions, the alliance decisions that are being made are being made because of the enhancement they can provide to corporate travel buyers,” said Jaqua.

AMCHAM, said Peart, will continue setting up its local partners with opportunities for growth.

“[More of] these forums will be based on the needs of our members and what they’ve asked for because when you’re part of AMCHAM Jamaica we’re trying to partner you with, our members. Delta is a member, so we do this that you get the best out of them.”