Independent travel management companies from across the globe must forge closer links if they are to compete with the multiple TMCs, according to one of South Africa's foremost corporate travel bosses.
Jim Weighall, corporate sales manager at agency consortium Sure Travel, was one of a delegation of international guests attending the Advantage Travel Centres conference in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Along with colleagues from consortia based in countries such as Australia, Canada, Germany and Italy, Weighell was involved in a series of discussions about how the groups can work together to compete against global forces like HRG and Carlson Wagonlit Travel.
All the organisations present at meetings, including Advantage, are members of the Worldwide Independent Travel Network (Win), a separate company based within the Advantage office in London.
Win has, until now, operated in the travel management space on something of an ad hoc basis. It primarily focused on working with hotel partners around the globe to construct corporate hotel programmes for the TMC members of its consortia members.
In other areas, such as airline ticketing, it would merely act to bring TMCs together. But, said Win chief executive Neil Armogie, it was time the group became "more proactive than reactive".
Weighell said he was confident tighter relationships between Win's members would be good for business, especially at a time when the multiples were going after small to medium sized corporates, the core business of independent TMCs.
"We need to cooperate on a global basis as independent TMCs," he said.
"In South Africa we compete against the big guys. But HRG, CWT, BCD and Harvey World Travel are all under one holding company (Bidvest). While they don't get all the benefits, the franchises are strong enough for them to go after our accounts.
"The multiples are targeting the SME market. We get the same message from the UK. So we have to be able to give a global perspective with substance.
"With Win we can make that happen. We can benefit from cross border account management.
"When you're pitching against the likes of HRG you need to add that international capability into your proposal. If we can do that we will soon start to see growth."
Weighell said that if the cooperation was to be successful, the group could look in the future to obtaining its own airline deals, and, perhaps, consider joint IT and back office solutions, potentially saving TMCs vast amounts of money.