Jean-Pierre Remy
Expedia Corporate Travel's service levels fell precipitously while the travel management company late last year focused all its U.S. technology resources on changing global distribution systems. ECT CEO Jean-Pierre Remy this month said service levels have since returned to normal, and also addressed other topics with The Transnational.
For the past few months, ECT's development staff was focused on nothing but the transition to Sabre from Worldspan. Is that period over?
Yes, we dedicated all U.S. resources to the transition, but not all ECT technology resources. We dedicated all our technology resources in the United States to building the same technology on Sabre as we have on Worldspan. That's not true for Europe [where ECT uses Amadeus]. We have had strong growth in Europe and one of our objectives is building global technology to offer the same services in Europe as in the U.S. We are now in an advanced stage of building a global online solution. Over the last months and quarters, we have continued to build two major things that we are now shipping in Europe. One is global reporting and the ability for clients anywhere in the world where ECT serves them to control in real time, on their Web site, any aspect of their travel policy. And the other thing is the global air platform or flight search engine, which will now be the same between Europe and the U.S., and strongly improves our offering for the clients that we serve in Europe.
Can you comment on the overall strategy related to outsourcing relationships, such as a new agreement announced this month in which a third party, APAC, would service ECT clients' travelers in the United States?
We have a number of growth initiatives with ECT and one of them is to continue to invest in service … we have been very proud of our client retention performance in 2006 and know it's a daily challenge to meet all clients' requirements, but we want to continue to meet their requirements and to invest in service quality. This move with APAC is really about that.
In terms of agent service configuration, ECT in the U.S. has a mix of internal and external resources. How is it constructed in Europe?
It is entirely internal in Europe. To be outsourced or in-house is not that important. One of the values to have some travel consultants outsourced is it gives you more flexibility. But most important to us, whether it's outsourced or in-house, is whether it's managed according to ECT processes and technology. One thing I did when I took over ECT was to organize the team on a global basis. Our strategy is to offer the same global online solutions for our clients, which is not only technology, but also service and content so that our clients have the same customer experience anywhere in the world. It's a major challenge for the industry; I think the franchising model is dead, and you have to be totally integrated all over the place. When we talk about globalization, it's not only about serving global clients; it's also about having local operations and global capabilities including data management, and I think this challenge for the overall industry is killing the franchise model.
What other areas have your attention?
People in the United States don't always realize how far we are in our international expansion. We jump-started our growth in Germany with an acquisition in November, and we will continue to expand in Europe both in the south--Italy, Spain--but also the Nordic countries and the Netherlands. We also have for 2007 a plan to take our first steps in Asia-Pacific. We don't have strong goals in terms of revenues or number of clients in these countries, but it's more about having a strong commitment to start building some solutions.
How do you expect to configure these expanded facilities?
Given what we want to achieve in these countries, we will mostly rely on our pan-European service center and technology, and organic growth. We cannot rule out an acquisition, but that's not our main focus. Our pan-European call center today is in Brussels, though we are opening a new service center in the south of France in the coming weeks that will be very central for us to build our presence further. We're running at full capacity in Brussels, which came when ECT acquired Egencia in 2004, so we need another one and we'll use it as a platform to serve some clients in South Europe. As for Asia-Pacific, Expedia Inc. already has a presence in different countries there, and ECT will basically follow the same tracks.