Pullman at Sydney Olympic Park, Sydney’s newest 5 star hotel, open from September 1, 2008

A new chain of upscale hotels for Accor, Pullman hotels are designed to meet the needs of business travelers, whether traveling alone or in a group.

Check In and Chill Out at Sydney’s newest 5 star hotel. Experience the most luxurious hotel in Greater Sydney. The magnificent 16 story Pullman at Sydney Olympic Park has been designed with the business traveller in mind, with the latest in technology throughout.

Located in the heart of Greater Sydney, close to the fast growing business hubs, including Parramatta, North Ryde and Rhodes.

Special Offer for BCD Clients: Experience Pullman at Sydney Olympic Park from $199 per room per night*.

Pullman, new attitude hotels for business travellers.

Whether you want to control annual meeting spend – leverage your meetings volume to gain efficiencies – increase sales or market share through incentives – recognize your employees – or improve your employee and customer communications, BCD Corporate Travel Event Management can help. The event management team in BCD corporate travel Australia combines the experience and expertise of our staff to achieve an unparalleled depth of service and talent across the meetings and incentives industry. This in turn makes us well positioned to meet the demands of a growing global business environment.

The event management team in BCD corporate travel has a wealth of experience in understanding and meeting the needs of a variety of corporate clients. Our people are key in our success. In all their dealings they are uncompromising in their focus on our clients – we seek to establish a mutual commercial relationship that meets your travel, conference, meetings and incentive needs. We back up the strengths of our people with technology that allows us to work faster and smarter.

North America’s gateway to the Pacific Rim

Canada’s third largest city, Vancouver is blessed with one of the most beautiful settings in the world. Ocean and mountains surround the city and expanses of tree-covered parkland fall within its boundaries. Vancouver is also the jumping-off point for exploring the spectacular scenery of British Columbia, from the islands and fjords of the Pacific Coast to the mountains of the interior, as it is located in the southwestern corner of the province, where the Fraser Valley meets the Georgia Strait. Vancouver is also the commercial and cultural heart of Canada’s West Coast and a major convention and tourist destination.

Traditionally, Vancouver’s dominant industries have been in the primary sector, drawing on the vast wealth of resources in the province of British Columbia. Even today, the industries that represent the largest proportion of the 134 firms with head offices in Vancouver are in the forestry and mining sectors, followed by construction, food distribution, retail and financial services.

What to see

Stanley Park
The ten-kilometer Seawall that circles Stanley Park provides incredible ocean views for strollers, joggers, cyclists and in-line skaters. If you haven’t packed your ‘blades, sports equipment can be hired nearby. The network of trails that crisscross the 400 hectares of rainforest and parkland connects the Seawall and beaches with an open-air swimming pool, restaurants, a totem pole park and the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Centre.

Gastown
Gastown, the reconstructed old center of Vancouver, is a pleasant array of cobblestone streets, cafés and shops. The area is named after Gassy Jack, a voluble saloon owner who offered the local mill-workers all the whiskey they could drink if they helped construct his saloon. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was open for business the next day. Gastown is also the site of the unique Steam Clock, driven by steam from the system used to heat Downtown’s office buildings.

Chinatown
Vancouver’s massive Chinatown district is centered on Pender Street and Main Street, offering a kaleidoscope of colors and rich scents. The night market (open Friday-Sunday, 18:00-midnight, from June-mid-September) is especially worth a visit.

At the western edge of Chinatown, the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden was the first full-sized, classical Chinese garden to be built outside of China and offers an oasis from the gritty urbanity that surrounds it. Based on Ming Dynasty precepts, the combination of water, plants, limestone rock and pavilions has finely composed views and is suffused with symbolism.

What to eat

Vancouver is a paradise for Pacific Rim cuisine; the city’s restaurants span the price spectrum from budget to blowout. If you want to eat well, you’ll be spoiled for choice - and you won’t have to spend a fortune to do so. As you’d expect, the city also offers a wide range of ethnic cuisines. Chinese and Japanese cuisines have the highest profile (though the latter tend to be expensive). Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai and Korean are more recent arrivals and can often provide the best starting points if you’re on a restrained budget.

Sun Sui Wah
3888 Main Street
(604) 872-8822
Step inside and you’ll think you’ve gone to Hong Kong. The food is beautiful to see and to eat, and the king crab is exquisite. This huge restaurant is run like a perfectly tuned machine. The wait staff is cordial, efficient and knowledgeable.

EN Japanese Restaurant

4422 West 10th Avenue
(604) 730-0330

The sushi and sashimi are, as would be expected, excellent – but the cooked dishes are just as good. Start with the best miso soup in town and order a bowl of rice to add to it. Then try the seared tuna served with black and white sesame seed sauce, the asparagus gyoza, the prawn gyoza, the tuna nori wasabi (done in a barely visible tempura batter), and the bok choi in a nut sauce.

Pho 66

3663 E. Hastings Street
(604) 299-3860

THE place to come for the eponymous Vietnamese noodle soup. One bowl is a complete meal, full of meats, noodles, and vegetables – the perfect food for one of those damp, chilly days Vancouver “occasionallyâ€? gets. Depending on your level of culinary adventurousness, you can choose from among dozens of varieties, from a mild beef broth to the cryptically labeled “Traditional Vietnamese Soup” – for which the menu doesn’t even attempt (or dare) to describe all of the ingredients.

Improved expertise and technology are enabling organizations to capture and deal with their meetings expenditure more effectively than ever before.

An estimated $325 billion is spent annually on corporate meetings, incentives, conventions and events (MICE), of which the US and Europe account for roughly $120 billion each.

MICE usually represents 25-40 percent of a company’s total travel spend and yet, says BCD Meetings & Incentives president Scott Graf, nearly 70 percent of global companies cannot or do not accurately identify their meetings spend, mainly because they fail to track as many as four out of five events that they organize.

Both the size of the meetings market and the difficulty of measuring and managing it explain why Graf describes MICE as the last frontier of travel management. Graf believes that is changing fast, if only because of a growing appreciation of how important an area of spend this is. According to Graf, meetings are more important then ever based on the rapid evolution of telecommuting and more of a global world. It is critically important for leaders and managers to get together to personally interact with employees, customers and supply partners.

Fortunately, buyers are understanding not only how much of a problem MICE spend is but also that there are solutions available to them. One part of the solution is to apply the same strategic management processes that they have already used successfully for managing transient travel spend. This includes using professionals such as BCD Meetings & Incentives which have grown a significant base of expertise in MICE to match their knowledge in corporate travel. Clients are telling us: I’ve seen you control our transient travel; please repeat the same for our meetings spend, says Graf. BCD Travel’s meetings subsidiary, BCD Meetings & Incentives, now has 350 employees and operates in nearly 30 countries.

The other resource available to MICE managers is technology. Tools have appeared on the market that help buyers and meeting planners to organize every step of an event and monitor overall expenditure. One such provider is StarCite, BCD Meetings & Incentives strategic technology partner.

When organizing a meeting, an online tool can help with the following tasks:

Plan plot scope of meeting and gain approval

Budget build budget and manage expenditure

Buy build, conduct and review RFPs

Attend create registration site to market the event and manage bookings for the event itself as well as travel, accommodation and entertainment

Measure includes expenditure reports, benchmarks and return on investment calculator

Using technology of this kind can help push companies towards significant savings, says Graf. In the case of businesses which have never previously attempted to manage their MICE spend, this could easily amount to a cost reduction in the order of 18 percent. It often proves to be the case that unmanaged companies have not previously even negotiated attractive group rates and consistent terms and conditions with hotels. Graf describes tackling accommodation as well as food and beverage as easy pickings but also substantial ones because they often represent more than three-quarters of the cost of an event, if air fares are not included.

With savings as substantial as these possible, many more companies can be expected to join the trend for capturing the MICE in their organizations.