BCD Holdings has pledged to keep its massively expanded travel management company interests at arm's length from travel technology business TRX. BCD owns 53 percent of TRX, which provides the corporate self-booking tool ResX as well as transaction-processing and data-integration services to numerous industry clients, including American Express and Expedia.
On Jan. 3, BCD ended its joint partnership with Hogg Robinson in Business Travel International and bought the TUI-owned assets in TQ3 Travel Solutions, and a stake in U.K.-based The Travel Company
(see story, page 1). Chairman John Fentener van Vlissingen said there are no plans to merge TRX with BCD's TMC interests and no plans to take the TMC business public. Apart from a small stake owned by its management, the remaining 47 percent of TRX is publicly traded.
BCD chief executive Joop Drechsel said the separate strategies similarly will extend to the TMC business as its chief executive Mike Buckman and new colleagues from TQ3 and The Travel Company set about integrating their technology systems. "We will develop one technology for the company," said Drechsel. "If TRX has good technology, we will use it, but if there is other or better technology, we should also use that."
Van Vlissingen also pledged to retain a low-cost reservations service as a major element of the BCD proposition. BCD and Hogg Robinson disagreed sharply on this issue, with the latter believing BCD's U.S. agency, WorldTravel BTI, had cut prices and costs too severely as it competed with the likes of Expedia and Orbitz.
"We will give clients all kinds of services," said van Vlissingen, "but America is ahead of Europe in the travel industry. The client is demanding lower cost, and I am willing to guess this will start to grow in Europe too." According to Drechsel, 30 percent of the bookings made by WorldTravel BTI are through customers' intranets, the majority of them no-touch.
Since the Jan. 3 split, BCD and Hogg Robinson also have argued over the future of the BTI name. Van Vlissingen said he requires Hogg to stop using the BTI name within six months. Hogg insists BCD has no rights in the matter. "To say the BTI brand name is to disappear is absolutely not true," said a spokesperson. "We have the right to use it until we say otherwise."
In spite of emerging as one of the most powerful individuals in global corporate travel, van Vlissingen has kept a low profile in the industry. A billionaire born into one of the Netherlands' wealthiest families, van Vlissingen pursued an early career in investment banking before switching to property development around Atlanta in 1975. In 1987, he bought WorldTravel Partners, which is based in Atlanta. In 1998, he bought BTI Americas and merged the two TMCs as WorldTravel BTI. The following year, BTI, founded as an agency network in 1990, reconstituted as a joint-venture company with BCD and Hogg as equal partners. Figures for the volume of business handled by WorldTravel BTI range from $3.8 billion to $4.5 billion.
Van Vlissingen will not be involved in day-to-day operations of BCD's combined TMC business but works closely with Drechsel, who will chair the board of the travel management company.