Tony Hughes
Travel management network Radius continues to pursue multinational corporate accounts, but is finding an increasing number of corporations looking to start consolidating regionally. Radius president and CEO Tony Hughes this week discussed this corporate travel consolidation trend, technology and other issues in an interview with The Transnational.
In which regions of the world are you finding the most interest for multinational travel management?
There is actually need developed all over the world. Because of a preponderance of head offices being in the United States and Western Europe, most leads are generated in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France and Scandinavia, but there is a huge amount of activity now inter-regionally, [such as in] Latin America. There are a lot of accounts now that might not be consolidating globally, but want to deal in Brazil and Argentina and Chile and Venezuela, so there's a lot of regional opportunity. You also have new powerhouses like China and India, and a huge amount of business in the Asian region and that is only going to go one way--and that's hugely upward. A lot of multinational business is going to emanate from that part of the world as we move forward.
Several years ago, Radius announced the "Wheel", described as point-of-sale share-shifting technology. How many Radius agencies are using this technology and what is it providing to corporate clients?
It's a far more refined product than it was before. We entered into a joint venture with BookingBuilder about 18 months ago and they worked with us on enhancing the technology for the Wheel. It's integrating the Wheel into BookingBuilder. The [Radius Wheel] product really needed an overhaul and now it's really buzzing. They brought that expertise to it. Our reach now has gotten into a lot more desktops and agencies. Currently about 35 of our agencies are using the Wheel [with] almost the same number in beta test. The coverage now is good and we're getting a lot more international coverage. The corporations like it for point-of-sale differential. Not only does it give the share-shifting opportunity, but it also enables our shareholders to have their own in-house rates and corporate negotiated deals quality-controlled through it, as well. That's a big plus for the corporate account managers because they're able to give reports off it to the travel manager. By the end of this year, we're hoping to have an enhanced air package on it. Currently, the only share shifting we're doing is non-air. It can do all products on the corporate negotiated stuff, but for pure share shifting, we're hoping to have an air product integrated this year.
Several years ago, Radius announced a common technology platform with Amadeus. How many member agencies are using this today and what benefits is it providing to corporations?
It's given people the option--that was the key thing. A lot of companies that we deal with are moving into the multinational corporate arena for the first time. They're companies that five or 10 years ago wouldn't have considered this move, but now they are. When we consult with them, we very much look at their needs. Predominantly their needs are to manage, consolidate, benchmark their spend in whatever way they can. Apart from top quality service in the local markets, they are buying the ability to have that information available to them so they can make sensible buying decisions on a multinational basis. They have a variety of ways to do that. One of the things that's attractive to people is a common technology platform. Out of 70-plus countries we're operating in, we currently have the ability to provide a common technology platform in about 60 percent of them. Sometimes, there's a variation on a theme. The consistent [technology] is the back office reporting system that will bring them the information, and the quality control system in the middle is predominantly consistent. Where possible, the Amadeus platform is where it sits, but sometimes it's not. If Sabre is best for the job, or Galileo, then we use that. If we're not using the same global distribution system platform, then we use the same mid-office and back-office platform. We use [mid-office automation provider] GDSX in the middle and [Cornerstone's data aggregation and reporting tool] iBank at the back. The dream ticket is one booking tool, Amadeus, GDSX and iBank, but we can bundle and unbundle. The main thing is to make sure the service and information required is achieved.
Since you introduced new technology--the Wheel and the Amadeus platform--have you won any brand new accounts through Radius, versus growth through multi-regional expansion.
Absolutely. We've actually got 15 multinational, worldwide accounts that we consolidate as Radius; we may have 250 that we've won locally between us; and then another 500 that are dealing with agencies in a more casual way [where] it hasn't been an official request for proposals, just using our local agency. What often happens is once that's established, we go in more formally and move that account into a regional basis. But it's hard to measure, as obviously we handle tens of thousands of customers worldwide, so you have the local expertise and multinational expertise. There is a huge number of accounts being shared between two, three, four or five of our shareholder agencies. Do we have to grow? Yes. Do we have to become more solid? Absolutely. Money and commitment, we're certainly moving in that direction. We're a totally different company now as opposed to what we were two years ago. We actually are on the radar now. We always had customers, but now they're multinational. We're on the lists. If you extrapolate that around the countries we're in, we now have 91 corporate agencies worldwide.
We understand you've been working on a corporate social responsibility policy. What are you developing and when will it be released?
It's developing. We're just doing some papers on it at the moment with a goal [to issue it] in the next few months. The interesting thing for us is that corporate social responsibility in Brazil is different from in London. What we're looking at is two-fold: How the company conducts itself in a responsible way ... what are we doing as a central business and what local agencies are doing. Our Brazilian agent does a huge amount of work with the street children in Brazil. Our U.K. agency actually sponsors a forest in the U.K. Our agency in New York has another social program. Different agencies have different programs and often it's very dependent on the country they're in and what the issues are. What we've all agreed on is that corporate social responsibility is not all about carbon emissions. That's been the high-profile side of it, but it's just a small part of the whole thing.