On July 7, the board of directors for the Association of Corporate Travel Executives issued a statement to announce that ACTE has gone out of business
Here are the relevant portions of the board’s announcement:
At a time when there’s such a great need for a diverse, global voice for our industry as it seeks to recover from catastrophe, it is with broken hearts that we must announce that we are filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and that ACTE has ceased operations.
The dual impacts of the cancellation of our Asia conference due to the security situation in Hong Kong as well as the COVID-19 pandemic cancellations have been blows that, as a small non-profit association, ACTE has not been able to withstand.
The employees and board members of ACTE have worked tirelessly to reduce costs and find a home for the ACTE community within a larger organization. Our discussions have been broad and deep with strong indication that we would be successful, but recent COVID-19 spikes have made investors and partners justifiably pessimistic around the viability of event-based organizations for some time to come. At this stage, the fiscally and morally responsible next step for us is to cease operations and defer to a trustee to determine the distribution of payments to creditors.
For our members and sponsors, we want to say how deeply disappointed we are that we have not been able to continue operations. When we opened [the online forum] ACTEConnect for the whole industry, we were inspired to see the resiliency of our community and its determination to rebuild. We regret we have not been able to find a lifeline to allow ACTE to continue to play a role in your recovery.
Operating since 1988, the core mission of ACTE was “to provide the education and tools corporate travel managers need to support their businesses and build their careers, while understanding the implications of ‘global’ within a business,” said Kurt Knackstedt, a former president of ACTE. The association had members in more than 100 countries and hosted more than 30,000 attendees at its events around the world each year.
