Travelsavers—a consortium of 2,800 travel agencies, many of which are regional travel management companies—has installed a new leadership team as it prepares to expand its preferred hotel program. Samantha Jones, who joined in January, heads the team as SVP of hotel programs. She most recently led North America sales for RoomIt by CWT and led Radisson's TMC consortia strategy for nine years. Trisha Hall joined the new hotel team in April as senior director, and business development executive Jeffrey Kerzman started in June. Both are alumni of travel services company Thor, which is a Travelport subsidiary.
Jones said TravelSavers brought her in to revamp and rebuild the group, which will focus on small and midsize enterprises. Travelsavers provides hotel discounts and content to its regional TMCs and agency members. It also uses its SAP Concur Travel relationship to enable those agencies to white label the booking tool, and it provides after-hours support to larger TMCs. About 55 percent of its members' business is corporate travel, but the actual number may be higher. "About 90 percent is Sunday through Thursday arrivals," Jones said. Those arrival days tend to indicate business travel.
The team also will work with corporate travel buyers or the internal stakeholder at an SME who handles travel. "Small to midsize companies have been largely left out of corporate travel management," Jones said. "This is a growing sector, and we plan to seize on this opportunity to grow discretionary business."
Jones also heads Travelsavers' luxury and meetings programs but will focus on the hotel program first.