Egencia today announced the launch of its own international travel management company network in nine countries in addition to its current 15 points of sale.
According to Egencia senior vice president of North America Pamela Keenan Fritz, some Europe-based clients already have begun processing bookings through the Egencia Global Alliance, which has agency members in Argentina, Hong Kong, Hungary, Russia, Romania, Singapore, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates and Uruguay.
"We are expanding globally to serve our large multinational clients," Keenan Fritz told
Business Travel News. "Some clients that we have that are multinational may not be big brand names, but they certainly have a lot of multinational business. That really is our focus."
Alliance members were chosen because of their mix of corporate travel and meetings and incentives business, according to Keenan Fritz. The company plans to add more agencies to the alliance, but she would not disclose the markets the company is targeting.
Regional directors in the Americas, Asia/Pacific and Europe are overseeing the alliance program. The agreements are reciprocal in that alliance members' clients can book outside of their home markets through Egencia.
For the past few years, Egencia grew its international presence through new points of sale in Asia/Pacific and Europe before becoming the latest U.S.-based travel management company to build a TMC network, joining the mega travel management companies, which partner with agencies in some markets while owning operations in others. Other TMCs are part of global agency consortiums or networks like GlobalStar Travel Management and Radius, which Travelocity Business joined late last year
(BTNonline, Nov. 20, 2008).
Keenan Fritz said Egencia is not discontinuing its point-of-sale expansion strategy, but the alliance currently is a more optimal growth avenue. "When we open up a point of sale, it takes us a long time," she said. "When we go into a market in a very deep way, we do a lot of research and develop a lot of in-house expertise. As we were looking to expand, we wanted to grow very fast, much faster than an organic expansion would allow. We also knew that there were real pockets of excellence out there that really understand these markets, but maybe we would not get to in the near term."