As the dust settles from the split of Hogg Robinson and BCD Holdings—once partners in the BTI brand—a new brand for meeting management services is taking shape. Hogg Robinson, now branded as HRG, is in the process of combining the meetings management products it has gained in acquisitions of smaller travel management companies in the United States and Canada.
The three meetings brands HRG acquired were Robustelli World Travel
(BTN, March 6), which had a separate division for conferences and incentives management; Advanced Meeting Partners, which was acquired along with Sea Gate Travel Group
(BTN, May 16, 2005); and Canada-based Bravo Meeting Management Solutions, which was owned by BTI Canada.
"We will be merging the best synergies between all of us where need be," said Ann Ford, president of New York-based AMP.
When the joint venture that owned the Business Travel International brand dissolved at the beginning of 2006
(BTNonline, Jan. 3), HRG launched a restructuring initiative for its North American operations. For the meetings management products, this means a new HRG brand, a technology acquisition and a new round of investment into product development, said HRG executives.
"When we land a corporate account, we are now selling value-adds," according to Paul Salvatore, executive vice president of sales and marketing for HRG and former Robustelli CEO, "and the value-add is meeting planning."
HRG acquired about 80 percent ownership of Advanced Meeting Partners when it acquired Sea Gate and is in the process of buying the remaining interests in the company and folding together the three meetings management products into one distinct HRG brand, Salvatore said. For the time being, existing customers will continue using the individual brands and new customers will be sold meetings management products under the HRG name.
"Our name reflects a strong presence in the meetings industry," AMP's Ford said. "For the time being, we will have both Advanced Meeting Partners and HRG Events because there's a familiarity and sense of security with existing clients knowing that the basis of who we are doesn't change and we're bringing better things and more opportunities and resources."
Salvatore said he would look into the management of all three meetings management products to gather best practices for a future HRG brand. The three companies come with different market segments: AMP worked mainly with pharmaceutical companies, Robustelli served consumer products companies and Bravo served the Canadian market. "In the growth mode, we will use the resources available to us on a global basis to go out through the U.S. and sell what we now know as HRG meetings, incentives, conferences and events," Salvatore said.
Robustelli and AMP already have combined efforts on three large bids for customers that have ties to HRG's U.K. operations, he said. "It's the branding that's the key now. We want them to know that we are taking full advantage of the resources to explore new opportunities in the U.S. That would be a combination of the best practices utilized by AMP, Robustelli and Canada, but it will be under the HRG North America banner," Salvatore said.
The management structure of the new brand, and whether the three divisions would keep their structures or be combined under the leadership of one executive, has yet to be determined.
HRG CEO Tom Gleason said that HRG aims to launch a meetings management brand by June, but that this part of the business is more difficult to integrate. "We had three distinct meeting planning groups; all very different the way they did business and all three very successful," he said.
AMP finds all its clients through referrals, and does not employ a salesforce to sell the product, Gleason said, while Robustelli and Bravo use sales agents. Meetings still are a frontier of unmanaged travel spend for many companies, he said, but the industry has yet to come up with "rules of engagement" that work for all companies. "There's a lot of opportunity, but it doesn't seem to move as quickly. It's hard to get your hands around it," Gleason said.
HRG also is looking to acquire an online attendee registration tool from a company "based in the U.K. with a large presence in the U.S.," Salvatore said. "We're looking for something all-encompassing that can accommodate all three companies. We're pretty close to somebody right now. It all depends on pricing."
"We have two different platforms, one in which our client controls the licensing agreement and then for all our other clients we have a licensing agreement with another vendor. There seems to be an opportunity, because our partner in Canada is using software that was written in Sweden and it's not a robust tool. Robustelli was using something else. They're all viable, they all do the job, but there's definitely opportunity to pool all those together and potentially have one Web administrator between the three companies," Ford said.
Ford said she expects some investment from HRG to expand staff and develop technology, but that the first task is to evaluate where the three brands can combine resources. "We're holding off on a big pull in cash until we see what each of the other entities has. This is a market that they recognize as growth," she said.