Expedia Corporate Travel this week acquired a travel management company based in Munich to serve as its full-service agency in Germany. The acquisition comes almost four months after the company announced intentions to expand to that region of Europe and gives ECT the largest multinational presence of the three Internet travel management companies, which also includes Orbitz for Business/Travelport and Travelocity Business.
Jean-Pierre Remy, president of Expedia Corporate Travel, said the acquisition of MTM Reisen, a small office of about 20 people, expands ECT presence in the German market with a TMC known for excellent service. "It's always been the way we've built our presence in new markets: Bringing on a small team of people who know the market, have the right connections and most important, have a very high standard of service," he said.
In building the company's presence in the United Kingdom and France, ECT bought London-based World Travel Management
(BTNonline, Sept. 2, 2004) and Paris-based Egencia
(BTNonline, March 29, 2004), which also hold operations in Belgium as well as the United Kingdom. ECT Canada launched as a new full-service agency earlier this year
(BTNonline, Jan. 31).
Remy said ECT will focus on growing further in the healthy online booking markets in Europe before expanding to other regions. "For the rest of Europe our strategy won't be to chase local clients, but to go with our existing clients to where they do business today," he said, citing a worldwide client base of about 3,500, with two-thirds in the United States. "We have some clients that we serve in 10 to 15 different European countries."
The ITMC, whose North American headquarters are in Seattle, Wash., this past year invested heavily in technology in order to have one platform across all markets. "We want to make sure that we maintain our technology leadership and expand the capabilities of our marketplace to really put together travelers and suppliers," he said. "At the same time, what is key for us is to be as global as possible. I realized when I started to run the business in the U.S. that the presence of ECT, in Europe in particular, was very much an unknown."
This past July, Remy took over for ECT's then-president Cheryl Rosner, who left the company citing personal reasons. Chistophe Pingard took over Remy's previous position as president for ECT Europe.
Meanwhile, Expedia yesterday released its third-quarter earnings report. Though Expedia's leisure operations grew gross bookings by only 8 percent over the same quarter last year, the corporate travel business saw a 50 percent growth, exceeding $800 million in bookings, according to the report.