U.K.-based mega travel management company HRG today announced industry veteran Chris Dane will lead a new North American TMC affiliate program with four founding members: Austin Travel, Avia International Travel, Casto Travel and Short's Travel Management. The program gives affiliates access to account management, technology and support services through HRG's global partner network, which includes 25 wholly owned operations that share accounts.
"The primary focus is giving larger regional travel management companies access to the global network so they can be competitive, have a global presence and more likely be able to hang on to corporate accounts," said Dane, president of the HRG North America Affiliates Program and a former president of the Hickory Travel Systems agency network and a former American Airlines executive.
The new North American organization "was never destined to be large," and at maturity will include about eight to 12 travel management companies, according to Dane.
The affiliate program is operating as a limited liability company, but is not a separate line of business from HRG within Hogg Robinson Group. Dane would not disclose specific contract terms of the program, which contains service-level agreements, but said it is not based on other agency network commission-based models, which tend to veer toward the leisure and smaller agencies.
While HRG only today formally announced the affiliates program, the founding agencies have been working with HRG. One member agency account now is being handled by HRG in two countries and another corporate account is in implementation, and four other accounts are in the bidding process, according to Dane.
Waterloo, Iowa-based Short's Travel Management, a former GlobalStar Travel Management agency network member, has been working in a partnership with HRG since early 2007, according to Short's president David LeCompte, who said the affiliation enables his company to compete in global bids and integrate with HRG's proprietary technology. "With the previous organization we were part of, there wasn't a central core working on that stuff and a lot of it was third-party," he said. Part of Short's agreement with HRG is a right of first refusal clause if the company's owners ever plan to sell.
At the time, Short's was in a bid process with former client Deere and Co., a
2006 Corporate Travel 100 company, and needed to adopt a global presence to handle the bid, which asked for an agency with wholly owned international locations. Short's then could not offer that, and so it ultimately did not retain the business. Short's still handles some accounts with its former GlobalStar relationship, but those accounts are shared with one or two other agencies. Short's currently has not enacted its HRG affiliation because it has not signed a joint client yet.