Barry Fleming
Marketing Manager UK & Ireland, BCD Travel
Currently Marketing Manager for BCD Travel UK & Ireland with responsibility for internal/external communications, sales support and service developments.
2008-2010 Acted as a freelance marketing consultant which included projects within the travel industry and for other B2B industry and Public sectors.
During this time I worked with Glazer, a brand Consultancy in London; writing sales proposals, pitching clients and project implementation. Accounts wins included; Investors in People UK, Opportunity Peterborough – an urban regeneration company, and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain.
Autumn 2008 I conducted a strategic marketing review for a leading UK Travel Management Company and earlier in the summer of that year I completed a strategic review on future development of a global hotel program for RADIUS – the global travel company -a US headquartered network of travel management companies representing $20BN of airline sales worldwide.
Prior to marketing consultancy assignments, as Director of Marketing at Capita Business Travel - a travel management company providing reservations and travel consultancy for UK corporate clients - I was responsible for re-branding and launching the business - formerly known as Lonsdale Travel - under the new corporate identity of Capita Business Travel.
Before that I was Head of marketing at Portman Travel, a travel management company with a sales turnover of £250M. My first role with Portman Travel in 1992 was marketing manager which progressed to Head of Marketing in 2003.
11 contacts2006 - 2007Capita Business Travel is a travel management company providing outsourced travel reservations and corporate travel programme management services to UK based organisations. As a leading service provider its clients spend £100M a year on their travel.
It aims to 'transform business travel in the UK' and is part of Capita Group plc, a FTSE 100 company who acquired the travel agency in 2005.
As Director of Marketing I was responsible for brand management, product development & customer communications, and reported into the Managing Director.
The projects to re-brand the business and re-launch the new agency at the UK's premier corporate buyers exhibition took place in Feb 2007 and was highly successful with prospect clients worth £140M pa registering their interest in using our services.
2003 - 2006Portman Travel is a top 10 leading travel management company in the UK with a turnover of £250M. It provides travel reservations services and managed corporate travel programmes. Portman aims to help its customers buy travel in a smart way. It is also a partner in Radius, a global network of travel management companies.
I progressed to Head of customer development - in effect, Head of marketing - and was responsible for brand management, customer & employee communications as well as product/service development. I reported to the Director of marketing & development.
Key achievements during this period include re-positioning the brand, being instrumental in a change management project which led to an organisational re-structure, launching and then being 'Publisher' of a contract-published customer magazine and finally driving a number of first-to-market customer service initiatives.
1992 - 2003In 1992 Portman Travel acquired AA Business Travel and at that time become the 4th largest business travel agency in the UK. Over the next decade the business model changed from one of an intermediary agency role, taking commissions on international flight bookings for business travellers, to more of a consultative role, charging transaction and advisory service fees to corporate customers who increasingly treated buying travel as another area of concern for their procurement division.
During this period 1992-2003, my role developed from being a Marketing Manager whose main focus with seen as supporting the national field sales team securing new clients to a broader role that enabled me to show that by managing the brand, marketing was adding value to the overall business performance -through improved customer acquisition and retention.
Ultimately, my biggest contribution was getting more senior managers to think and behave in ways to support the Portman brand without them realising that they were in effect practising 'marketing'.