Meet Andrea Caulfield-Smith

• 13 Aug 2024
• Danni de Nervaux

Andrea Caulfield-Smith joined Advantage in April as Managing Director, Global Business Travel. Within her first few weeks, she was onstage in Mexico presenting to over 300 delegates her plans to develop our global business travel strategy at this time of fast growth. We wanted to chat with Andrea to find out more about her and how her first few months have gone.

What attracted you to join Advantage? 

I’ve known the Advantage brand for a long time and have always admired what it stands for and of course more recently I was impressed by Julia’s visibility and presence to speak and lobby on behalf of our industry. I started my career as an independent TMC so passion and amplification on enabling the independent TMC was a big draw to the role.  

I wanted the opportunity to combine my knowledge and that of existing teams to really make a positive difference and create more opportunities for our members. Members are part of Advantage and whilst we have strength, size and scale, we are small enough to care and listen and I think that’s really important. 

Tell us about your plans for the Global Business Travel division.  

It starts with a vision...  

To be the world-renowned ‘One Stop Business Hub’, delivering market-leading capabilities to our members and partners, envied by many and replicated by few. A partnership delivering best-in-class programmes, by subject matter experts, that test the boundaries of travel, technology and innovation – always being the trailblazer and building our future vision for Advantage Global Business Travel  

So how are we going to do it?  

My future strategy will ensure we are leading from the front and embracing new capabilities to further scale our offering to you our members and our partners. Through a redefined engagement strategy, we will collaborate with One Voice, One Vision and future-proof our industry-ready. There will be moments of uncomfortable activity – however, if we aren’t uncomfortable, we are not growing.    

There will be many steps to take but we will begin by enhancing our proposition to attract, entice, educate and reward partners. We will deliver market-leading solutions which embrace modern retailing, prepare our partners for industry evolution and we will provide a regular drumbeat of communication to members on the progress of strategy and initiatives which underpin it.  

I want members to hold us to account for driving change. I want to ensure a positive experience for members and partners to embrace the ‘new normal’ in an agile manner. And finally, I want to future-proof our business, so we lead not follow! 

What have been your ‘highlight moments in your first three months?   

There have been so many – meeting members and suppliers early on in my tenure has been vital for me to be able to listen and hear as to how we can evolve our thinking with our future strategy, plus I love being out on the road and seeing people.  

Presenting at the conference and sharing my vision so early was a privilege and finally sharing my strategy headline with our Board to assess my direction of travel (excuse the pun!) was satisfying and they loved it. 

Tell us something most people don’t know about you.  

I think everyone knows how passionate I am about business travel and that I have been in and around it for 34 years, so something completely different would be I’m a glassblower!  

Around four years ago, I started Glass Blowing through an impromptu meeting with glass blower Ingrid Pears MBE, when I popped into her studio to see if she could make me a glass water jug. She promptly encouraged me to come to a class and make it myself, which I did. Ingrid is now one of my best friends and I try and blow glass at her studio on a 121 class every three months and am absolutely hooked. It is such an amazing hobby, tests the boundaries of a really unpredictable substance and the end results are simply incredible.

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would it be?  

It would have to be the North Pole; the experience would be simply amazing. 

Finally, what would be the one piece of advice you would give to a potential travel agent looking to start a career in the industry?  

Go for it!! Our industry is saturated with amazing talent and people who care about inspiring people to take a holiday – be one of them. Our Advantage Managed Services (AMS) proposition will help you get up and running quickly, so why delay in speaking to us?