BCD Travel has promoted Mike Janssen to the position
of president of the Americas, replacing industry veteran Danny Hood in the
role.
This transition has been in the works for three
years, ever since Hood returned from retirement to head the American portion of
the global travel management company. The move became effective July 1.
Janssen, who previously served as president of
North America, now has taken on responsibility for Latin America as well as
strategic decision making for the entire region. Janssen has worked for BCD
Travel since 1993, and since then has served in finance, operations, account
management and supplier relations capacities. Previously, he held management
positions at Aon, Unisys Corp. and Peterson Consulting.
BCD Travel global president and COO John Snyder
described Janssen as "a solid leader for many years" and said that
among his strengths, "he knows all angles of the business very well and
has great client relationships. He has fabulous employee leadership and
customer skills."
Snyder said Hood, who will stay on in a part-time
executive consulting role that will include strategic work and select client
relationships, "provided great leadership in the downturn."
Hood said he drew on his 30 years of experience to
manage through the tough times and make the tough decisions required to weather
the economic challenges. At this point, he said that in North America the
travel management company is up 3 percent to 5 percent in sales from 2008
levels and 25 percent over last year. Hood said "the client base has come
back strong and is finally ahead of budget for a couple of quarters. That is
when you want to leave it, when you are back on top."
Snyder said that in 2009 and 2010, client retention
was "spectacular" despite the "huge activity in clients
examining their contracts" and that the company was "30 to 40 percent
ahead of the aggressive sales goals that he had set."
Hood noted that there were no other changes to the
team running Latin America, headed by Barbara Blue. He said there has been "phenomenal
growth in Brazil, Mexico and Peru" and that while other countries in the
region have had some challenges, BCD Travel has augmented growth in Latin
America by opening a new call center in Costa Rica.
Snyder said the strongest region for growth remains
the Asia/Pacific region. While he acknowledged that recovery in the Americas
has outpaced EMEA, he said that he was "fairly encouraged in the
transaction levels in mainland Europe in the past couple of months."
As a result of improving performance, Snyder said
the company has "brought back quite a few of the front-line staff"
laid off during the downturn, brought back others out of work-time reductions
as well as made new hires. "We hope to bring much more back between now
and the end of the year, but we’ll be cautious about how we do that."