Nearly three years after merging as sister companies, Travel Leaders Corporate and Altour's corporate travel business are combining operations under a single brand, effective immediately. The two entities have banded together under the Altour brand, with a unified travel support and advisory staff of more than 2,000 across 57 offices, the companies announced Wednesday.
The businesses initially came under the same corporate umbrella via the August 2017 merger of Travel Leaders Group and Altour, which created a single travel agency organization with nearly $24 billion in annual sales. Since then, the two sister companies had worked closely together on international accounts, air agreements and entertainment travel, they said. They now will operate as a single business unit.
Travel Leaders Group also is considering merging two other of its travel brands. Protravel International and Tzell Travel Group since 2016 have operated as separate entities within the same division, but Travel Leaders Group CEO J.D. O'Hara told BTN they could be unified under a single brand.
"We are having internal discussions with our advisors about aligning Tzell Travel Group and Protravel International [and] leveraging the expertise, programs, service and support teams of both organizations," O'Hara said. "For now, it is business as usual. All of our executive leadership remains in place."
(Update, May 15): Travel Leaders has confirmed integration plans for Tzell and Protravel.
While the brand unification comes against the backdrop of the global Covid-19 outbreak, which has brought corporate travel to a standstill, the companies said the decision to combine Altour and Travel Leaders Corporate had little to do with the pandemic.
"We were always planning to merge these two together, because it made total sense for many reasons. So the pandemic was not the driving force. It would have happened one way or another anyway," said Alexandre Chemla, founder and CEO of Altour.
The newly unified company cited several business advantages of banding together, including cost savings and enhanced negotiating power, more efficient systems and processes, a consistent account management and client experience and expanded geographic opportunities stemming from Altour's robust presence in the U.K. and France. The companies also cited the potential to cross-sell Altour's leisure offerings to corporate clients.
Altour said there was no workforce reduction as part of the rebranding and there are "no plans for layoffs at this time."
The shutdown of corporate travel due to the pandemic did give the brands an opportunity to increase their focus on organizational alignment, according to Gabe Rizzi, who served as president of Travel Leaders Corporate and has been named chief revenue officer of the unified brand.
"It's the least disruptive time to do something like this, when transactions are low, so the timing is perfect," Rizzi noted.
That said, the companies already had been operating "in parallel" for the past few years, including cross-servicing the same clients in different global markets, Rizzi added—so coming together under the Altour brand "made perfect sense."
Along with Chemla and Rizzi, the Altour senior leadership team will include Lee Thomas, who will serve as COO, along with Barry Noskeau as EVP of strategic planning and Joseph Oppold as EVP of global operations.
While the Travel Leaders-Altour unification may not have been spurred by Covid-19, Louise Miller, managing partner for Areka Consulting, expects many travel management providers to simplify their corporate structures during the downturn in order to reduce costs and increase efficiencies for when business picks back up.
"A world where TMCs can just take stock in each other and operate as sister companies because business is healthy and they don't need to focus to cutting costs is a great world to be in, and we'd been there for a while," said Miller.
"But in today's world, TMCs will need to combine operations, because they don't want to rebuild separate silos again," Miller added. "It makes more sense that companies that share ownership actually integrate operations so they can leverage that as travel comes back."
And because TMCs currently aren't earning much revenue on travel, now is the best time to devote resources to business realignment with minimum disruption, Miller noted.
"The opportunity cost of spending time on that when travel is good is high. But because now you'll have to rebuild anyway, why not?" Miller said. "I think we'll see more of this."