Spain's Biggest TMC Leaves Radius For HRG

Viajes El Corte Inglés, which claims to be the largest travel management company in Spain, quit the Radius network on Monday to become the Spanish and Portuguese partner of HRG. It replaces Empresas Marsans, with which HRG severed ties after its parent company, Grupo Marsans, ran into severe financial problems and IATA revoked agency operations license because of the failure of another Grupo Marsans subsidiary, Air Comet, in December.

"We have been watching the situation with our former partner's parent group for a while," said HRG chief executive David Radcliffe. "The provision of a quality service to our clients is paramount to HRG, so we have spent some time evaluating the best alternative options."

El Corte Inglés takes over the Spanish and Portuguese partnerships with immediate effect. It worked with HRG before: both became founding members of the now-defunct global network Business Travel International in 1988.

Along with the rest of southern Europe, Spain has lagged behind northern Europe in embracing procurement-driven travel management, but HRG said there has been a trend in the past couple of years for the country's larger corporations to consolidate their choice of TMC internationally.