One-On-One: Boland's Parting Shots

By BTN / January 09, 2000

One-On-One: Boland's Parting Shots

Maritz Travel Co. president and CEO Michael Boland, who recently announced his intention to resign this spring, sat down last month with BTN travel management editor Sarah Welt to talk about the future of the agency and the travel management business.

BTN: What can you tell us about your replacement, Jeff Reinberg?

Boland: He is currently the executive vice president of Maritz Inc. (see story, page 5). He reports directly to Steve and Bill Maritz, our chairman and CEO, respectively. The real message is that this is a fellow who started with MTC over 20 years ago as a travel director. He moved through several key management jobs in client services, operations, and Maritz Travel, then moved into a role at the corporate level. His job today includes the overall global information technology function, the global HR function and the global strategic sourcing function for all Maritz facilities. He has one of the most senior roles within Maritz and he's had that for some years. In that role, he has been an active participant in the travel company's strategic planning meetings, budget meetings, quarterly performance reviews, all the things we do to run the business.

BTN: Will Maritz remain an independent company? Do you think the Maritz family wants to sell the business?

Boland: There are always rumors about everyone buying and selling. I can assure you that Bill and Steve Maritz are committed to remaining an independent company. We will look for joint venture opportunities and others, but I think the most direct way to say it is Maritz is not for sale.

BTN: So American Express is not going to acquire you?

Boland: Definitely not. And it probably means we're not going to acquire them.

BTN: What is the status of Northstar?

Boland: We are increasingly bringing on clients. It's going extremely well. We are doing some data consolidation right now in Belgium in a center established through our GTM partner there for some of the smaller European countries that is being fed into Northstar. We are delivering several clients here--Cindy Heston of Thomson Consumer Electronics is a good example of that. Apple is beginning to get data. It is really starting to work extremely well, but we continue to promote it.

BTN: What are your goals in terms of client usage and volume?

Boland: Northstar will be fully deployed to all clients by the end of 2000.

BTN: How has last summer's reorganization affected operations and how you manage clients?

Boland: By centralizing our operations and distribution function, I think it has helped us move more quickly into some improved efficiencies in call management and processing. It helped us accelerate the deployment of our online fulfillment center, which opened Dec. 15 (BTN, Nov. 15, 1999). Those things all resolved a more coordinated global focus on operations and distribution, which is allowing us to integrate technology and online booking.

BTN: What products and services are you adding?

Boland: We will be launching in January a new state-of-the-art contract negotiation and analysis tool, which has yet to be branded. Basically it will be a new third-party-developed tool. It will allow us to give our clients a totally objective, thorough analysis of various contract options.

We also will be launching a much more robust benchmarking product that will allow clients to compare their spend rate and performance against a variety of sorts--by industry, our total base of business or by like-sized customers--so there will be some new and improved benchmarking tools.

Third, we are continuing to refine a lot of our meetings and events products. We were a launch licensee for the StarCite company, which is coming up with some innovative meeting management tools, including a sophisticated auction product. This tool complements many products we already have, most of which we have built ourselves over the years in the meetings management area. We are giving more information about the venue, about meeting options, optional sightseeing and breakout sessions. We promote attendance and have a back-end research tool that goes back to participants and assesses satisfaction. The Web sites are not just a matter of booking an airline seat or hotel. It is a more comprehensive communications process that starts with everything from announcing a meeting or event all the way through doing research on the back end to see whether participants learned what they were supposed to learn or enjoyed what they were supposed to enjoy.

BTN: Is the benchmarking product being launched in January?

Boland: It should be in the first quarter, but I don't want to get committed to January because we are still putting some final touches on that.

BTN: Was that created in house?

Boland: That will be a combination of in-house and some outside databases.

BTN: How are things going with Amex regarding your meeting venture?

Boland: We just launched about 45 days ago, sometime in October. We announced it in July and have been getting formalized. We have received more than three dozen solid leads from American Express and some already have turned into solid business to operate during the next six months. Many are still active in the proposal stage. I really don't want to get into the exact numbers of sales, but we have about three dozen leads and a number of sales. Anytime in group business when you can get a lead and sell it in 30 days, that is doing very well, so we are very pleased.

BTN: How are things going with Amex for the stored debit/incentive card?

Boland: I know there have been meetings and discussions going on, but our IT people and theirs have been working on that. I don't think there will be anything on the immediate horizon, but it is an active project. We'll have something in the next 30 or 60 days on that.

BTN: Are other joint venture partnerships planned?

Boland: There are lots of other things in the area of technology going on right now--whether they are joint ventures or licensing arrangements. I've talked about StarCite and the new air analytic tool, but there isn't really anything else I can talk about right now. There will be more, rather than less, opportunities for these kinds of things, both here and globally.

BTN: If you were to stick around, what new lines of business would you be getting into during the next few years?

Boland: I think there will be more e-commerce in the business-to-business environment. There are not any plans today to move into the consumer arena from a Maritz Travel standpoint. We are interested in business to business, being able to do anything and everything anywhere that a corporation needs to do with travel, from a board meeting to buying the right piece of technology, to designing a travel policy, to managing 300 meetings. We see the business-to-business market as our strength, with huge opportunities. More and more companies are going to need the best advice in these areas, so we see that as continuing to have huge potential. We have looked at other ventures in the past and don't think we are ever going to rule out anything, but there are lots of opportunities in the business-to-business world.

BTN: How many clients do you anticipate working through the online fulfillment center by year-end 2000?

Boland: We are branding it as the eCom Service Center. I bet by the end of 2000 we've got several dozen clients going through there. The question will be the pace of electronic booking acceptance. We could have a couple hundred clients in there by then. It depends on the penetration of the tool, and we are working with clients to help them in that through better training and communication. Some may use it for only a few transactions, so we may not get a lot of volume, but we expect some of our more aggressive clients to get up to the 30-50 percent range. We also had some early interest in the center and its capability from other e-commerce providers who were looking for a fulfillment support capability and who have wanted more choices for that service.

BTN: So, do you plan to open more eCom sites or expand the existing center?

Boland: It is strictly a function of volume. We can take up to about 200 clients, but that depends on how many transactions we are moving. The plan is to continue to have one center in St. Louis. Because it is electronic, there is no customer reason to have multiple locations unless it is for staffing and time zones.

We could be fulfilling transactions in Europe, Seattle, Miami or St. Louis. The game plan certainly is the ability to add large blocks of space and staff, so we plan to expand the center here, but we know some competitors have multiple sites. That is yet to play out.

BTN: Do you have any last words of wisdom?

Boland: Technology is going to allow us to be more personalized in our service and that is where the travel management company has a bright future. We have a bright future at the corporate level with clients--helping with policy, procurement, technology selection, employment, reducing the total cost of travel--and on the front-line road warrior level, in providing personalized service. One of the challenges is a definite cattle-car feeling in airports and often on airplanes and in hotel lobbies. The ability to have staff who travelers are communicating with, who know who they are and what they need, is important to them.

This will be one of the new defining capabilities--macro management of total expenditures for value and delivering minute-to-minute service to the end user.

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