BCD Travel has opened a new service center in Colombo, Sri Lanka, that will provide program deployment for clients in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore as well after-hours servicing for clients around the world.
The new BCD Travel Asia-Pacific Service Center, wholly owned by the travel management company, currently has about 200 full-time employees, and BCD projects it will be one of its largest operations in the Asia-Pacific region by the end of the year. Pradeep Kumar will lead the center as executive director with a local management team and will oversee the center's talent recruitment and operational efficiency.
The decision to open the center in Sri Lanka also figures into BCD's sustainable operations plan, according to BCD president and CEO John Snyder. "Investing in a country emerging from political and economic instability not only supports our strategy for sustainable growth but also demonstrates our commitment to care for our communities and feed the future," he said in a statement.
At The Beat Live in December, Snyder identified staffing as "probably the biggest challenge" for the TMC and said the company was looking for innovative ways to compete for talent. At the time, Snyder said BCD had brought in 4,500 new employees since the beginning of the year and still had about 1,000 openings.
"We've had people exit the industry who have had a lot of long-term knowledge and expertise, so we're having to bring new people into the industry and train them and get them up to speed," Snyder said at The Beat Live. "We're having to look out to new solutions and new talent pools we haven't tapped in the past. The talent pool is very thin out there, and we're all fighting for the same people, so we're going to stop that game and bring new, talented people into the system."