WTP-BTI Americas Integrates, Lands Business

<B> WTP-BTI Americas Integrates, Lands Business</B>

By Sarah Welt

<I>Atlanta</I> - One hundred days after the merger of WorldTravel Partners and BTI Americas (<I>BTN,</I> Oct. 26, 1998), the combined organization has won $316 million worth of new business and is bidding on $2.1 billion more. As part of a strategy to find synergies between the two agencies, the new organization is leveraging WTP's and BTI Americas' technology, meeting planning and consulting services and evaluating back-office overlap.

Some new wins are multinational corporations--and can be attributed to the new entity's relationship with the global Business Travel International--including Union Bank of Switzerland's $70 million in U.S. business, as well as Amerada Hess, Levi Strauss, PeopleSoft, Household International and IMC Global.

"In a little over three months together, we've picked up close to what we might have done in a whole year," said Jack Alexander, CEO of WTP-BTI Americas, though he acknowledged the company also lost $80 million worth of accounts.

Co-president Danny Hood attributed the wins in part to the "fact that the marketplace is looking for a new option and is intrigued by our two companies together." Of Quoni, for example, which held the domestic Swiss piece of the Union Bank account, Hood said, "I am sure it wasn't out to source its second largest account to a U.S. partner until it knew which one it was going to be. There was some pent-up demand from clients that wanted to consolidate multinationally and as soon as they found out we were stable, a lot of business began to come into play."

In the next 30 days, the new mega agency expects to receive RFPs "that will probably total another $1 billion," he said. "There is a significant amount of business going out to bid and they are some huge accounts. Twenty of the top 100 are seeking bids right now."

Under the new arrangement, WTP has gained access to BTI Americas' consulting services division and its airfare contract optimization model software, which will be marketed as Contract Partner. WTP and its technology sister company, Travel Technologies Group, are creating a version for travel managers to do their own "self-service airfare contract management." Hood said this version--the idea for which came from Eli Lilly travel manager George Odom--should be ready for market by the third quarter.

The mega also is tying new codes from Electronic Data Systems into its existing point-of-sale technology. To be called Profile Partner, the system will "synchronize an HR database with a GDS profile, ResAssist and other booking engines, so basically you keep the traveler's profile in a company database," which will "speed up the rate of automated bookings because you don't have to recreate all the profiles," Hood said.

On the mid-office side, BTI Americas' existing three products will be completely converted to WTP's CoRRe by the end of March. Alexander said, "Putting BTI accounts on our CoRRe Mid-Office product has been a big operational efficiency." Hood said that while their ManTIS Mid-Office product will no longer be used, "we will continue to support ManTIS Point-Of-Sale for our global res centers like Portland, Cleveland, Kansas City, New York and Raleigh."

Regarding back-office technology, "everyone as of Dec. 11 was off the Compass back-office system. They've all been converted to Global Max," said WTP-BTI Americas CIO Pat Carey.

Alexander said the two agencies also will "consolidate some overlapping offices," with one closing in the second half of the year. As for employees, "on a net basis, I would say a couple hundred" will lose their jobs.

For meetings buyers, WTP plans to leverage BTI Americas' training and conference center management expertise. Hood said BTI Americas had six clients outsourcing training and conference center management--including DuPont, Eli Lilly, Ford Motor, GE Lighting and Goodyear, and "we thought this was a hot, value-added service."

WTP now has those clients reporting to its group and event company, WorldTravel Meetings and Incentives, and plans to roll out its meetings booking tool, Meeting Assist, in the third and fourth quarters. The Web-based system, formerly nicknamed Zorro, will let users register for a meeting and book housing, air and ground transportation.