Air France Global Meetings, a dedicated product for the meetings and events industry, changed its name to Air France and KLM Global Meetings last November thereby adding the tariffs and network of KLM to the pot. For Air France, the meetings industry is extremely important even though it’s very diverse because we can be dealing with convention centres, companies, tourist offices, event organisers and agencies, notes Françoise Martin, who is in charge of sales for Air France’s Centre Est division. I am the point of contact for Global Meetings in the Rhône-Alpes and we offer this service to all of our various industry partners so that they can take up the reductions themselves as well as pass them on to their delegates too.

In order to avail themselves of these benefits, organisers need to sign up to the service and register their event on the Global Meetings website no later than two months before it takes place (or no earlier than five years in advance). The other condition is that the event must involve at least 10 participants likely to need flights.

Once the sign up process has been validated, the conference organiser will receive a summary of the request via email giving a reference code which can then be passed on to participants, whether they are exhibitors, visitors, journalists or spouses. They in turn just log on to the Global Meetings website, enter the reference code and can then buy their reduced rate tickets online.

Air France was the first airline in the world to offer such a service. The reductions on offer range from 5% on the special delegate rate, 10% on full fares and up to 47% on specific flights within mainland France ! The reduced rates are also valid five days before and five days after the event in order to facilitate pre and post conference meetings, making this a very tempting offer and one which deserves serious consideration particularly as organisers earn one free short haul flight for every 50 international flights sold via Global Meetings…

Air France represents 50% of Lyon Saint-Exupéry’s traffic, with almost 4 million passengers in 2008. 34% of this total is made up of passengers taking advantage of the three time spans offered by the company’s Lyon hub in order to connect with other national and international flights.

Air France serves a total of 45 destinations with 242 daily flights. 23 of these are internal French flights, 19 European, one long haul to New York and two to North Africa. The Centre Est division of the company employs almost 1000 people and is the preferred partner for various events and organisations including the Grand Ski workshop, SIRAH, Maison de la Danse, Théâtre des Célestins and Rhône-Alpes Tourisme.