Tech-savvy leisure-travel brands have gradually become fixtures on the corporate scene. Martin Cowen investigates
THE “CONSUMERISATION” OF corporate travel might have the linguistic purists among us up in arms, but language has as much right to evolve as the business we operate in. Part of that business evolution is the entrance into the sector of brands and businesses with a background in online leisure travel.
Travel management company (TMC) Egencia falls under this definition. It is part of Expedia Inc, which owns the eponymous online travel agent, hotel specialists Hotels.com and Venere.com, Elong.com in China, discount specialist Hotwire.com and, until recently, reviews giant Tripadvisor. Even after spinning off the latter, Expedia Inc is the biggest online travel company in the world.
Christophe Peymirat, recently promoted to Egencia’s senior vice-president for EMEA and Asia Pacific, joined the business when it started out as Expedia Corporate Travel in 2000. He was involved in its 2004 purchase of Paris-based TMC Egencia, whose name Expedia Inc adopted for its corporate arm in 2008.
All TMCs are big on technology – buying in, partnering or developing their own. Egencia appears to have the best of all worlds – as a dedicated business unit within Expedia Inc, and with its own development budget.
However, it also has access to its parent company’s expertise and experience. “We can share the technology bricks, taking what is relevant for the corporate market and using it to Egencia clients’ advantage,” says Peymirat.
As well as “leveraging the technology investment of the group as a whole”, Peymirat is also clear that the group’s “experience of leisure patterns” was informing the corporate side. “The usability of the interface is a constant focus for leisure, and we are taking things we’ve learnt from that to optimise the corporate side.”
NARROWER FOCUS
Other online leisure travel agents have dedicated corporate interests, primarily focused on North America rather than having the global footprint of Egencia. Travelocity Business is an autonomous part of Travelocity, whose European leisure brand is Lastminute.com. Travelocity, in turn, is part of Sabre Holdings, owner of the Sabre global distribution system, and online booking system GetThere.
Travelocity Business president Yannis Karmis says the company has annualised sales “well north of $1 billion”. He is also keen to point out that its growth had been organic, “unlike Egencia, which has grown through acquisition”.
Karmis says Travelocity Business’s growth has come slowly, but was kick-started when it picked up the Lockheed Martin account, “one of the biggest in the US”, in 2006. He admits that “in the early days there was some scepticism, although some people were willing to have the conversation because of the credibility we had from being part of Sabre”.
It stuck to its guns with a defined strategy of going after “medium to large accounts which already had a structured travel programme in place”. Winning Lockheed Martin, a relationship that has recently been renewed, was key. “Lockheed is an important account, in terms of being a defence contractor with governments among its clients,” Karmis says. “Its demands on security, compliance and budget accountability are stringent. And we also helped out with its relocation business, VIP travel... a whole portfolio of services. It made the market pause and think.”
Orbitz for Business is another TMC borne out of a leisure parent, in this case Orbitz Worldwide, whose flagship brand, Orbitz.com, is a big online travel agency in the US. It also owns Ebookers.com in Europe with Hotelclub as its APAC-focused accommodation-only website.
Orbitz Worldwide has had a complicated corporate history, resulting in travel tech giant Travelport now having a 48 per cent stake in the business.
Frank Petito, president of Orbitz For Business, stakes a claim to being one of the first TMCs to emerge from a leisure-focused parent company. “We recognised 10 years ago that many corporate travellers started to question why they were paying a travel manager to book their trips when they could do it themselves online,” he says.
Orbitz is very interested in small- and medium-enterprises (SMEs) as well as bigger accounts, and has recently launched Orbitz for Business Express for the SME sector.
Petito explains that Orbitz for Business is “a supercharged version of the Orbitz.com platform, taking everything the leisure site can do and adding corporate requirements such as reporting, duty of care, a dedicated call centre and negotiated rates”. Orbitz for Business Express sits between the Orbitz leisure and corporate brands.
However, the differences between the three TMCs may be wider than one might initially have thought, particularly when it comes to booking tools. Egencia has its own integrated solution, which as mentioned takes elements from the leisure platform, but to all intents and purposes is a proprietary technology – a booking tool exclusive to Egencia.
Travelocity Business has totally outsourced the booking tool side of its business. Karmis explains: “We decided not to build own our booking tool because we think in the long-run it is difficult to sustain.” Instead, Travelocity Business has a commercial relationship with GetThere and recently signed a deal with Concur as well. “The idea is they make the specific investments needed for the booking tool and we concentrate our resources elsewhere.”
Petito at Orbitz for Business views the decision to use its own technology for its booking tool as a significant point of difference. “Our booking tools tap into the core competency of the business that is using technology to make booking travel easier. We can leverage decades’ worth of knowledge and millions of dollars’ worth of investment,” he says.
An addendum to the booking tool debate is Egencia’s recent purchase of Traveldoo, a European online booking tool specialist. Peymirat explains that the deal was a pure technology play. “We will run the business separately,” he says. “Not everyone wants Egencia’s integrated solution, but they might be interested in the Traveldoo self-booking tool.”
GOING GLOBAL
Another difference is their approach to international business. Egencia has dedicated points of sale in 20 or so key markets. Its most recent deal, subject to final approval, is the proposed purchase of VIA Travel, one of the largest independent TMCs in Scandinavia. Egencia also services its global client base through the Egencia Global Alliance (EGA) – partner agencies that act as its agent, giving a presence in 47 countries.
Peymirat explains that the decision whether to buy or partner depended on whether “the market has potential for growth and whether there is an appetite for technology-based solutions. So for Scandinavia, the answer would be yes. But markets such as Bulgaria, South Korea and Morocco are better served through the EGA.”
Travelocity Business instead uses members of the Radius consortium to service the local needs of its international clients, with Portman Travel its partner in the UK. Karmis says it was not actively seeking new business in Europe but it would do “at some point, but not in the near-term”.
Sitting between the two is Orbitz for Business, which uses the Orbitz.com platform to fulfil corporate bookings in markets where it has a presence, such as the UK and western Europe. Elsewhere, it uses members of the Globalstar alliance.
The TMCs with a background in leisure travel are now part of the corporate space. And while it has taken a decade or so for them to become established, either by organic growth or by acquisition, the chances are they will start playing catch-up very soon as their core competency – technology – becomes a prerequisite for every part of the sector.