Mark Cuschieri is GBTA board president and executive
director for global travel at UBS
In August last year Mark Cuschieri was elected board president of the Global Business Travel Association, becoming the first person outside of the United States to assume the role. The London-based executive director for global travel at UBS achieved a similar landmark when elected vice president two years earlier.
“I think it really signifies where GBTA is in terms of its mission and goals – putting the ‘G’ back into GBTA,” he says, adding that he was once one of the association’s biggest critics. “I’ve been volunteering for 13 years. I am a firm believer that if you want to change things it’s better to be in it rather than just throwing stones.”
In summer 2020 GBTA was rocked by allegations of misconduct against its then CEO Scott Solombrino. Though cleared of the allegations, Solombrino departed and the association went through a rebuilding period.
“GBTA is in a very different place now but it's only our members who can tell us that. I've spent time listening, engaging and seeing new members and they tell me that GBTA is moving in the right direction,” says Cuschieri. “Is it perfect? No. We all agree that the industry is changing, evolving so quickly, and therefore that's where GBTA needs to support members as we encounter these challenges and opportunities.”
Although a global organisation with many universal challenges, Cuschieri recognises that every region and country has its idiosyncrasies. Sustainability is higher up the corporate agenda in Europe than in some other regions, for example. There is a need to therefore operate regionally – “talking about the nuances of a market and how we advocate with governments” – but also to pursue common standards and discuss the “big, big topics”. Most important of all, he says, is to have diverse voices among the many volunteers upon which GBTA relies.
How does he see his tenure as president panning out? “The pandemic's over; we need to move forward and my purpose has been about resetting the board – not about what I will achieve or what the board will achieve over the next two years. We want to ensure that we leave our tenure in a better position than we found it and we're setting the framework for the future, not just for a period of time.”
Cuschieri says the board, like in any organisation, should be behind the scenes creating governance. “You won't see the board as front-facing as maybe in the past and that's no disrespect to my predecessors or anything like that, but my task and the task of the board is really to be there to support and to be ambassadors. Suzanne [Neufang, CEO] and the amazing GBTA team that we have are front-facing.”
Sustainability at the core
Probably the biggest issue for this industry right now is the consideration of its carbon footprint and the justification of travel. “If you talk to any supplier within the value chain, sustainability will be in their top three [priority] areas. We need to travel. Carbon's the problem, not travel,” says Cuschieri. “The benefits of meeting face-to-face and connecting people is critical to any business. So in some shape or form we have to innovate and we have to do that quickly.”
Already people are travelling differently, he says, pointing to trends witnessed by many: fewer but longer trips, road warriors who’ve reined in their travel, modal shift from air to rail.
“Will we travel less? Maybe,” says Cuschieri. “Sustainability is also a mindset that's becoming an important part of younger talent and of the culture of an organisation. My view is how do you make sustainability business as usual? I want to be at a point where we're not even talking about it because it becomes business as usual. It's part of the process. Are we there yet? No. Is that the objective? I think it should be coming as a normal decision factor when you are choosing to travel.”
Government intervention will also be fundamental in helping the industry reduce its environmental impact, says Cuschieri. “Advocacy is extremely important because there has to be regulation to ensure we accelerate, for instance, sustainable aviation fuels. How do you scale the production of SAF? It's got to be scalable. How do we do that? That requires government intervention and incentives to accelerate the production.”
The ‘bookability’ of international high-speed rail in Europe is another area where improvement is required to entice business travellers off aircraft. “It should be easy to book long-distance rail trips with multiple operators but it’s really not,” says Cuschieri.
Such improvements fall under the scope of the EU’s Multimodal Digital Mobility Services (MDMS) initiative. Another EU initiative, uppermost in many buyers’ minds, is the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive which requires companies of a certain size to report on their 2024 carbon emissions in 2025, including those associated with their business travel activity (Scope 3.6) and employees’ commuting (Scope 3.7).
Are buyers ready for CSRD? “No, not necessarily. Everyone is on a different journey when it comes to sustainability. I say to people that whatever little you do today is more than you did yesterday. It’s about creating foundations,” says Cuschieri.
“I look at our membership, the range and scale, and we need to be there more for those who don't have the resources in play within their organisation. We [GBTA] need to provide the clarity, hence why we're doing a lot of advocacy in Brussels to better understand what are the requirements going to be. We already are preparing our membership to provide them with the tools to support them and help them. There's a lot being done in a very short period of time.”
Content discontent
Perhaps the most divisive topic raised by Cuschieri is that of content fragmentation, with the fallout of airlines’ accelerated distribution strategies impacting corporates in 2023.
“Content is king and things are changing and evolving very, very quickly,” he says. “Modern retailing has a place, absolutely, but it needs to be done in collaboration together as an industry. That to me is critical. Buyers just want a seat at the table when companies are making strategic decisions around their roadmap.”
The issue of travellers finding cheaper fares on leisure booking sites and taking them to travel managers is back with a vengeance. “These are very frustrating conversations to be having in this day and age,” says Cuschieri. “We all talked about collaboration during the pandemic when this industry came together like it's never done before but I worry that it's reverting to pre-2019 levels and that's not good for the industry. It's not good for anybody, supplier or buyer. This is a time when everyone needs to come together and even if they are difficult conversations they should be had in a very transparent and open way.”
According to GBTA research, nearly half of buyers feel industry technologies such as NDC will pose them challenges in the year ahead. That, says Cuschieri, is largely down to corporates not knowing how to plug growing content gaps and a lack of clarity from TMCs and airlines.
“I'm not going to mention a specific supplier, but there are always going to be disruptors in the industry. There are some who are going to maybe extend their reach a bit too far,” says Cuschieri.
“When any supplier doesn't want to play in the corporate space, then that's their choice. Corporates will make their own decisions whether it's right or wrong for them. It's not, in my view, for GBTA to decide whether it's right or wrong because it might suit one buyer and not another. What we are pushing for is that before decisions are made, suppliers consider the impact of their actions.”
What corporates can’t do is “stick their heads in the sand and think it’s going to go away”. The marketplace is changing and that, says Cuschieri, is when GBTA can do its best work. “It's about informing, it's about learning, it's about educating. Our role is to provide the platform to have those discussions, to have that debate, and to provide factual information to better educate and inform our members.”