Dee Runyan
BCD Travel this month announced the establishment of its network in 96 countries, including "ownership in key markets." Executive vice president Dee Runyan discussed the announcement with The Transnationalduring the Association of Corporate Travel Executives conference. Runyan also provided an update on progress of BCD's integration following the consolidationof WorldTravel BTI, The Travel Company and the European TQ3 travel management company previously owned by TUI.
How has BCD structured its network?
We started with relationships with BTI, TQ3 and the Synergi partners, and really had the opportunity to pick and choose for the new, broader BCD, so it was nice to start with a clean slate, in essence. Former Synergi president and CEO Greg O'Neil is running it as senior vice president and managing director, and he also specifically oversees Asia-Pacific for us, reporting to me. We have three main regions: Asia-Pacific, the Americas run by John Snyder, and continental Europe run by Ilona De March. The U.K. and Ireland right now is its own separate region and reports directly to Mike Walley. As in the old WorldTravel, where division presidents were in charge of operations, account management and really being close to the customer, we're using that same theory globally. So, that leaves some global things in my world, whether global hotel relations and programs, technology initiatives, etc. Also, professional services and consulting needed more of a focus, and so Mary Ellen George is directly in charge of that. TQ3 already had some strong capabilities, and we had some over here, so that's now all under one umbrella. I manage technology, the partner network and industry relations.
What's going on with development of the Renaissance technology platform?
A lot of that predated the finalization of the big deal, and so when you marry three companies with technology initiatives and successes of their own (which they all had, with TTC being well-known for it and TQ3 having some really interesting technology), you sort of compare your CD collections and determine whether you really need three copies of The Beatles' White Album. The answer is no, we probably don't. So, on a parallel path with picking a vendor, we had to be flexible with software licenses, etc. The design phase is underway. We have a deliverable of first quarter next year for that, but in the meantime, one of the things we got in the new marriage is an infrastructure that had an agency point of sale, supplier gateway and other pieces that have been test-driven in another market. That was from the TUI entities that we bought. Whatever happens with content, a big chunk will still be in global distribution systems. But, as the Air Canada issuehas recently shown us, we still need connectivity through the G2s, ITAs and Farelogix etc., or directly to certain suppliers.
It seems like the point of sale technology and related connectivity are difficult to build. Where did TUI get theirs?
The German market is a completely different market than any other. There's one major national carrier, and many hotels that are not in the GDS. Agencies there are dealing with companies like Hotel Reservation Service, rail that is not integrated in the GDS, ferries, etc. So, they already had that need and had to have figured out the variety of connection points. TUI developed it with a third party called Conet Gmbh out of Hennef, Germany, and we think we'll be able to pick out big chunks of that and embed them into a user interface that has a broader application throughout the owned world.
One of the biggest challenges in travel management company mergers is handling the integration of technologies. Can you give us a rundown of the big pieces and any decisions you have made?
The good news is we made the back-office decision and we're going with ICSAT products (owned by Amadeus). The only places we have to alter are Canada, where we had the old WorldTravel and old TQ3 up there, and they were using Trams, so we will migrate to GlobalMax, which is an ICSAT product. In the U.K., there was a homegrown system called Pride in TQ3 and we and The Travel Company had ICSAT, so we're going to all ICSAT. It's not necessarily the same [system] because GlobalMAX is not truly global and AceMAX isn't right for every market, but it's all ICSAT platforms. It will all be done by the third quarter. The mid-office is similar to the back-office in that we're all using different ways to get to the same answer. In the TQ3 world, they use Compleat from GDSX more for passenger name record drainage, or a way to get pre-trip information. From a quality-control standpoint, they use Amadeus. TTC uses some TRX products and some internally built solutions, and in the States and South America we use TRX's Correx as well. We have ongoing obligations to all those companies, and now we have an operational excellence team ensuring a baseline of quality control in all reservations. On reporting, the three of us came with our different versions of the White Album, with different covers on it. TQ3 has historically had an enterprise relationship with Hi-Mark Software, TTC has some of its own systems and then the old WorldTravel group has Hi-Mark in addition to TravelMaster, which we announced earlier in the year. Data consolidation is the biggest check-mark in any of these global migrations. Because we're still servicing a lot of customers as BTI and the TQ3 guys still have a relationship with Navigant, there is a lot of data movement. So we just need to make sure the extracts contain the same information, and we have the ability to migrate that data into one place.
Is there any reason to establish preferred booking tools?
Booking tools are like GDSs, in our opinion. There isn't a global answer, so it's very important for us to have the right relationships in the U.S., and a lot of that bleeds into Canada. South America is a whole different ball game, and in Europe some tools are country-specific, where certain ones work better in Germany or in France. In the U.K., we see some from the U.S., including GetThere, Cliqbook and Resx. Rail and ferries play a part, and there just isn't one tool, so we do what's best for the market.