Following the recent controversy created by the unveiling of last month’s Liberal Democrat research revealing a 37% increase in delays at UK’s busiest airports, a preliminary study undertaken by the business travel educatory organization, the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE), reveals that a significant amount of business travel could be routed to other European cities. Eighty percent of multinational companies participating in the study are anticipating airport meeting travel to go elsewhere, such as Frankfurt or Schipol.

Yet sixty percent are considering “demand management,” a process by which travel alternatives are used to reduce internal corporate travel. The remaining 40% have not resorted to this tough measure yet but are considering it. 60% of respondents blamed outdated facilities, volume of traffic and poorly conceived security measures for the delays at British airports.

ACTE introduced the concept of demand management as a potential travel alternative last spring. The practice uses the latest in technology to link laptops and desktop computers for real time teleconferencing. There are other advantages to demand management as well. These include freeing funds for revenue-producing travel, while simultaneously reducing the carbon footprint.

ACTE Executive Director Susan Gurley is calling on the entire industry to put airport congestion at the top of their agendas. Gurley said: “It’s time for key segments of the travel management industry to work together and try to reach a consensus on airport congestion. There may be no better time than the Leadership Summit at the ACTE Munich Conference in October. Whether the problem is with access roads, outdated infrastructure, parking or security, the issues have to be treated as simultaneous priorities. In addition, from a CSR perspective, the quantity of resources being consumed while waiting is staggering. Time and resources cannot be easily recovered once spent.”

ACTE’s Global Education Conference in Munich (October 21-23) will combined communications technology, expense tracking techniques, and advanced travel management strategy-building in one program. Simultaneously, world leaders and industry authorities will be meeting in a European Travel Summit, to resolve issues like congestion, as well as security matters and service concerns.

* This ACTE poll was taken by an informal polling session of senior travel managers in Britain in the final week of August 2007.