Travel Directors

Travel Directors and Trip Directors

The titles Travel Director and Trip Director are used interchangeably these days. While the two terms may have had different distinctions in the past, those lines have become blurred. Luckily for those that don’t want to pick a term to use, they have the same acronym, so they can also just be referred to as TDs.

While the terms are basically the same, there are actually two very different ways in which people utilize TDs. There are local Trip Directors and traveling Trip Directors and each has their own benefit. Luckily GCG Event Partners provides both types of professionals, so let’s take a look at how the options are different.

Local Travel Directors and Trip Directors

Using local Trip Directors or Travel Directors gives you access to meeting and event professionals or even teams of professionals that live close to specific venues. They actually go by many different titles in addition to TDs. Here at GCG Event Partners, we usually refer to them as On-Site Professionals. Sometimes they are even referred to with as broad a term as temp staff. There is a wide difference between On-Site Professionals and Temp Staff, but that is a separate topic. There is more about that in this blog.

Benefits of using Local Travel Directors:

  • Trip Directors are industry professionals with knowledge of the local area
    • Often times with experience working in the venue being used!
    • Being local and being industry professionals makes for a robust on-site solution
  • Instantly assemble a skilled live event or meeting team
    • Experienced Travel Directors are easy to direct and manage
    • Using industry pros instantly adds on-site experience to teams
    • TDs can be requested with targeted skill sets when needed
  • Your office staff stays in the office and can focus on planning
    • No flights necessary, thus no airfare, instant cost savings
    • No need for hotel accommodations, additional cost savings
    • No time wasted on increasingly complex travel logistics

Traveling Trip Directors and Travel Directors

At times, a skilled travel team that has intimate knowledge of your meeting, conference or event details is the best solution. When there is a series of meetings or events, an experienced team that has first-hand knowledge of that series makes for a high quality experience for attendees.  In certain cases, utilizing meeting planners that can travel with your group is the best approach.

Traveling TDs can have specific event skill sets such as dealing with room blocks, managing off-site events, or taking care of speaker or VIP needs. GCG Event Partners matches our professional Travel Directors with our clients’ distinct needs for each event.

Benefits of using a traveling TD:

  • Build a solid and consistent on-site traveling team for your events
    • Especially important when there are nuances and details that are key to the meeting’s success
    • Have experienced personnel on-site that know your specific program
    • Less oversight, better results
  • Hire meeting planners that can concentrate in targeted areas of your event execution
    Food and Beverage Transportation
    Off-Site Activities Audio Visual
    Speakers Meeting Rooms
    Registration and Sleeping Room Blocks Shipping and Receiving
  • Hire well-rounded meeting planners to oversee the entire program
    • For smaller programs, one experienced TD is a cost effective solution
    • For larger programs, our pros have years of on-site experience managing teams