They promised to honor all contractual arrangements and to serve existing clients together as Business Travel International, but BCD Travel and Hogg Robinson Group each has made decidedly independent headway in recent weeks as both unveiled major client wins.
Despite the very public setback of a delayed initial public offering, announced late last month, HRG no less than two business days earlier announced it had won the mammoth Credit Suisse account from American Express. Including services that cover 80 percent of Credit Suisse's roughly $280 million global travel spend--according to Business Travel News--the selection delivered to HRG what it called a "three-year contract, worth over $200 million."
HRG had already serviced the company in Switzerland, but added to that with new business in the United Kingdom and United States. Credit Suisse in Latin American is serviced by Flytour, a new partner of FCm Travel Solutions.
The win helped validate HRG chief executive David Radcliffe's recent commentsabout being "invited in on all major global tenders." It also softened the recent blow of losing formerly joint BTI business to BCD Travel, including American Standard and Eastman Kodak Company.
Like Credit Suisse, Kodak was a Rosenbluth International client before American Express bought Rosenbluth in 2003. Kodak corporate travel services manager Doug Baldy this week said the fact that about 70 percent of Kodak's worldwide travel program was already with the WorldTravel part of BTI--which has combined with other entities to become BCD--was only one element that favored BCD over HRG. He said BCD offered Kodak "good" economics and has provided "top notch" account management and traveler service. In addition, Kodak was impressed with BCD's technology direction, including its developing Project Renaissance distribution platform, the planned upgrade of its global portal (which Kodak already used) and the migration to Hi-Mark Software from BTI's Global Expense Management System for data consolidation.
Kodak solicited bids only from BCD and HRG, partly to reduce change management as the company entered a period of significant downsizing.
American Standard also had evaluated the two parties over the past few months, and considered "proposals and operational issues," said American Standard EMEA and Asia-Pacific travel and fleet manager Pascal Struyve. He declined to compare the two vendors, noting that U.S. travel officials including global sourcing director Thomas Barrett and global travel director Ernest Guerra led the selection.
But Struyve did outline the company's implementation plan. He said one of the first items on the agenda is in his region, where processes for 11 out of 19 countries by year-end would be standardized through consolidation in BCD's Mechelen, Belgium call center. Technology issues and a lack of program maturity in some countries precludes full call-center consolidation, he said.
Sometime next year, Struyve said, all 37 nations in American Standard's program will be serviced by BCD offices. He credited Barrett with the establishment, about five years ago, of a global travel management program that also includes a consolidated card deal with Amex. "Everything which we can do on a global basis, we do," he said. "We have a global hotel program [and] there is a global airline program. Not necessarily everything has to be global, depending on local needs, but where we can and where it makes sense, we are in a global environment." The company spends about $25 million annually on air travel.
American Standard is planning to implement online booking in Europe, thanks partly to the Mechelen consolidation. Kodak's Baldy said the same.
While it manages travel in 13 European nations, Baldy said Kodak would start its call-center consolidation in January for the largest of them, including France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Spain--roughly in that order. For those countries, the process should be wrapped up next year, he said.
"At the same time we're installing with BCD, we're installing the Aergo self booking tool [from Amadeus e-Travel] and the plan is to do the file fulfillment of all transactions through Aergo out of the Belgium center," said Baldy. "We're trying to duplicate what we have done in the U.S., but five years later. At first, in the U.K. and Germany, we'll use Aergo, but it will be locally supported."
He said about 70 percent of all domestic and about 30 percent of all international tickets are booked online by travelers in the United States and Canada, where Kodak has a longtime contractual relationship with Sabre's GetThere. This year, BCD recommended e-Travel and arranged the relationship for Kodak.