First-Ever Egencia Earnings Show Softness As Remy Departs

Egencia this month announced that president Jean-Pierre Remy would leave the travel management company to become CEO of a large European firm outside of the travel industry, effective May 15. Egencia North America senior vice president Rob Greyber will fill the post.

Meanwhile, Expedia, the TMC's parent, late last month for the first time reported Egencia's quarterly earnings as a separate business unit within the brand portfolio, and showed significant sales volume and revenue declines.

Greyber joined Egencia in 2007 when he migrated from Expedia's partners services group where had responsibility for airline relationships. Remy noted the sustained business continuity by installing an internal successor. "I've made a lot of my decisions in running Egencia with my leadership team and especially with Rob," Remy told Business Travel News. "You should expect that the company will continue to follow the trajectory and follow the main initiatives that the company has been working on for a few years now."

Vice president of Asia/Pacific and global partnerships Pamela Keenan Fritz will replace Greyber as senior vice president of North America. Keenan Fritz has overseen Egencia launches in Australia, China and India. Christophe Pingard still serves as senior vice president and managing director of Egencia Europe.

Remy became president of Egencia—then Expedia Corporate Travel—in 2006, after leading the company's European operations since 2004, when Expedia parent IAC/InterActiveCorp acquired Remy's French online travel agency, the original Egencia. "I put a lot if not all of my passion and energy into it over the last 10 years," Remy told BTN.

Egencia's business had grown steadily since its initial launch as Expedia Corporate Travel in late 2002, but as the economy and corporate travel demand has shifted downward, so has its volumes.

Egencia's first-quarter 2009 gross booking volume decreased 18 percent year-over-year to $321 million, contributing to a 10 percent revenue fall to $25 million.

For full-year 2008, Egencia had $1.5 billion in gross bookings, a 15 percent increase over 2007. Total Egencia 2008 revenue increased 21 percent, year-over-year. During the first quarter, Egencia lost $1 million in operating income before amortization. In the same period last year, it earned $2 million in OIBA.

Expedia previously combined Egencia's results with its Asia/Pacific operations. The change to separate Egencia came in a first-quarter global reorganization.

As other TMC executives have indicated, new president Greyber said the steep declines felt in the first quarter appear to be on the wane. "There are signs that the market and corporate spending has stabilized, and with the recent event of the swine flu impact, it's difficult to assess at this time, but it appears that at the beginning of Q2 things have kind of stabilized a bit," he said.

Before departing, Remy said Egencia already is built to handle market shifts like the downturn. As such, the company has not made any large-scale internal changes and is ramping up sales and marketing efforts.

"All TMCs are accelerating their transformation to cope with the changes in the industry," Remy said. "We already had the transformation in place. From the beginning, our business in Europe, North America and, more recently, Asia was built to manage 90 percent of the transactions online, so we don't have to adapt to changes in the industry."