As a result of the alliance, agencies within Worldchoice with a corporate travel division will be given the opportunity to join Uniglobe to run concurrently with their Worldchoice membership
The new alliance will be initially introduced to Worldchoice's top agencies with specific corporate divisions, with phase two commencing later in 2008.
The companies estimated that phase one of the partnership would bring an additional $50 million turnover in corporate travel sales from Worldchoice members. Uniglobe is a leading business travel network specialising in the SME corporate travel market, operating from 700 locations in 40 countries with annual system-wide sales of $2.7 billion.
Participating Worldchoice members will have access to the same facilities as Uniglobe's current agencies, including centralised programmes and systems and access to its preferred supplier programmes both within the UK and globally.
Worldchoice hopes that access to Uniglobe's global buying power and its technology and training programmes will be beneficial both within the agencies themselves and in selling to prospective clients. The staff of participating agencies will have the use of programmes such as UNIGLOBE Travel Manager (an automated quality control system) to ensure compliance with the client company's travel policy.
As a result of the new alliance, Worldchoice hopes that its corporate division, CorporateChoice, will become a serious competitor in the corporate travel market because its members will be able to tap into a single-branded global presence in business travel.
For Uniglobe, the move is a chance to increase membership through independent agents.
As part of the deal, Worldchoice director and head of CorporateChoice, Tim Giles, will be invited to sit on the Uniglobe Owners Association. He commented: ”This is an excellent opportunity for those of our members who are serious about corporate travel and will now give them the ability to compete with larger corporate travel management companies. It allows them to network accounts on a global basis, something we couldn't do prior to this alliance. Today, you have to have the ability to handle global accounts to be a serious TMC (travel management company).
In a separate move, Worldchoice is merging with Travel Trust Association 2007 (TTA 2007), which is expected to be complete in August. For more details, visit www.worldchoice.co.uk/bustravel.php