Agency Applies Lawyer Travel Model To Other Markets

<B> Agency Applies Lawyer Travel Model To Other Markets</B>

By Sarah Welt

<I>New York</I> - Niche agency player World Travel Specialist Group has made inroads in four new vertical markets in the past year or so using the same high touch approach it has used so successfully with lawyers.

The new divisions are The Advertisers' Travel Service, The Bankers' Travel Service, The Consultants' Travel Service and the Recruitment and Relocation Travel Service.

The Manhattan-based agency--which has grown on the West Coast through the Lawyers Travel Service of California, a joint venture with Sundance Travel of Irvine--plans to expand internationally through a joint venture that it hopes to conclude with a London-based travel management company at the end of the first quarter.

The agency's flagship division, the Lawyers' Travel Service, launched a decade ago, now accounts for 80 percent of its $120 million in annual air sales.

Chairman and CEO Paul Metselaar said WTS was the first travel agency to open an onsite travel department for a major law firm. Currently, LTS manages travel using onsites for 300 law firms in the United States. LTS has paved the way for the other niche divisions, particularly the recruitment and relocation division, because LTS has been responsible for law firm recruitment travel, one of the largest non-billable expenses. Like lawyers, professional service firms bill a lot of travel back to clients, which use a lot of premium travel.

The high volume of premium travel gives the company more clout when negotiating with travel suppliers for blanket discounts. Metselaar said that supplier negotiations are fruitful because "we have a very high profile in the industry which enables us to get very lucrative deals." He said the LTS' LawFare program saved 23 percent on law firm airfares last year.

To maximize its high touch service, WTS uses an incentivization/penalization program that pays agents a higher base salary than the industry average and offers incentives on a quarterly basis based on what they do to surprise a customer, such as leaving a voice mail waiting for a traveler checking in to a hotel in Hong Kong.

Metselaar said an agency acquisition also could play a part in meeting his ambitious growth goals. "We want to double the size of our company in two years," he said. In that time frame, "We want to be a quarter million in air.