Christopher Vasiliou
Radius last June named Sabre Holdings veteran Christopher Vasiliou as its new president and CEO. Approaching his first anniversary in office, Vasiliou last week spoke with The Transnational about what has changed at Radius since his arrival.
What have you accomplished?
My first focus was on our global corporate travel model and continuing to build the infrastructure around that, providing global corporate travel management services, sales support, request for proposals development and support, data management and reporting. We're doing it in more than 50 countries worldwide for members. That was my focus coming in, and we're pleased with the results. We have had better-than-expected success this year; we're on plan for the year. Having said that, transactions are significantly down among our members. But there's a lot of new business out there.
What has been the biggest change under your leadership?
I restructured the company into very specific lines of business, putting in a lot of the infrastructure and IT processes, some leadership in our supplier relations organization, in our corporate sales and service organizations and in managing the global network. This provided some clarity and priority on investments. The first half of 2009 has been about putting all the pieces of the global corporate sales and service model together. We now have embedded global sales execs at some of our key shareholders and, in some cases, around the world; it's operational execs instead of sales execs. I'd put our RFP development and delivery up against everyone's.
Have you seen changes in the way companies go about soliciting and implementing travel management companies?
Absolutely. It's all about data. Pre-travel management is really important, as are other analytical resources to help them understand their trends. It's a very different model than it used to be--not just moving from business class to economy. It's about understanding the complexity of travel. On a global basis, more so in Latin America and Asia, you don't have pricing transparency like in North America. The way I gauge that is the questions they ask during review sessions. They're asking questions that require a lot more analysis of things like what their policy should be relative to time, destination, carrier, etc.
How many multinational accounts do you have now?
Radius itself, not the membership, manages more than 200 corporate customers globally. We're in a very interesting segment of the market. I'm thrilled with the growth, although we're sensitive about how quickly things can change. We have become the international department of the Radius shareholders, so it doesn't matter where the business originates. Europe and North America are the primary drivers of business, with Asia and Latin America more the receivers.
How do you measure growth?
We set very specific sales goals in gross sales, number of engagements, number of transactions and net revenues. We compete with global travel management companies to secure corporate business and distribute it to the Radius network. We're down like the rest, but nowhere near [as much as] the higher end of the market. Our corporate client segment is not in the Fortune 500. The lower-volume companies did not take the bigger hit. A lot of existing customers' transactions are down dramatically, but companies are still going out and looking for travel management services.