Corporate Traveller set for February launch
FCm Travel Solutions is launching a new brand dedicated to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
The specialist Corporate Traveller division will take on all FCm's new and existing SME clients. According to FCm, its current UK-based SME clients are worth £150m of business.
Debbie Carling, executive general manager at FCm UK, said Corporate Traveller aims to be the dominant player in the SME market by 2014.
"It is becoming increasingly important to tailor brands and their associated offering to the needs of a specific marketplace as every customer has bespoke requirements," she said.
"Corporate Traveller will challenge conventional thinking as to the kind of service a client can expect regardless of how much they spend on corporate travel."
FCm’s decision to focus on the SME market reflects recent trends in the industry. HRG launched Simply HRG for smaller companies last September, and Carlson Wagonlit Travel has said it too is looking to pick up smaller bits of business.
The former director of a global travel management company has also criticised multiple TMCs for ignoring the SME market in the past.
Mike Platt, who last year stepped down as HRG’s director of industry affairs said that the SME space was a critical market place and lent itself perfectly to the TMC model.
“Airlines can go out and do deals with big corporates. But they don’t have the resources or man-power to send out hundreds of salesmen to negotiate with the SME. That’s where the TMCs are worth their weight in gold and part of the reason airline’s are drawn towards working with agencies and their consortia,” said Platt.
Last year FCm gained £60m worth of new SME business, and it says the new Corporate Traveller will double that in 2010.
These smaller businesses, spending £5,000 to £1.5 million a year, will be charged per transaction, with no fixed contracts.
The name Corporate Traveller was Flight Centre Limited's corporate brand specialising in SME business from 1993 to 2004 in Australia and New Zealand, with a smaller presence in the UK, South Africa, USA and Canada.
In 2004, after a number of acquisitions and partnership agreements, Flight Centre put all its business travel operations under FCm Travel Solutions. It is now resurrecting the Corporate Traveller brand for SMEs in the UK.
www.uk.fcm.travel