The Business Travel Magazine Dec/Jan 2019/20

Travel TMCs / tech Debate / Five reasons
DENISE HARMAN
Vice President, Customer Management,
Western Europe, CWT
Denise Harman
As the TMC market evolves,
A
TMC
the competition is constantly
increasing too. This means
that TMCs need to keep up
with the rapidly evolving
needs of the corporate buyer and business
traveller to stand out.
Whether you're a global TMC,
niche player or tech start up,
innovation is imperative for
survival. With 79% of
travellers stating their
travel experience has an
BE BIG OR
impact on their job
satisfaction, employers
now see traveller
productivity,
satisfaction and
BE SPECIALIST!
retention more
important than cost.
Whichever mould,
scale or specialism
a TMC fits, investing
It’s often said that in a shrinking market travel
meaningfully in
data quality and
management companies need to be big
integrated service
solutions to enhance
operators or be specialist operators in
traveller wellbeing, duty
order to truly thrive. Two TMC
of care and enabling
organisations to drive
representatives have their say
decisions to transform their
business, is non-negotiable.
As a scale technology player in
the global corporate travel market,
CWT is invested in – and is investing
more now than it ever has – to enable
seamless, end-to-end traveller experiences
across all channels. It's this breadth of
technology investment that enables us to
deliver digital services that appeal to
corporate travellers, whose expectations
have evolved at the pace of technology.
And with this continued drive, deter-
mination and data
investment, we can outinnovate
in a costeffective
way that niche
players and starts-ups
simply can't.
We can innovate in
a cost-effective way
that niche players and
starts-ups can't”
A smaller TMC does
need to have its own
distinct point of difference”
Simone Buckley
SIMONE BUCKLEY
Chief Executive Officer, Fello
doesn’t necessarily have
to either be big or niche.
However, in today’s world of
rapid consolidation among
TMCs, a smaller TMC does
need to have its own distinct point of
difference, communicate that effectively
and live by it. And it also needs
to understand exactly which
customers will most value those
points of difference.
Certainly there are some
specialist sectors such as
marine, oil and gas, sport
and NGOs that require
specialist expertise but
both large and small
TMCs have mastered
the art of providing
good services to
these niche
customers.
At Fello, our point
of difference is our
focus on the traveller
because we believe
that if the traveller is
happy, then the travel
manager can focus on
delivering the benefits of
a well-managed travel
programme rather than firefighting
traveller service issues.
By blending the best automation
and customer-facing travel technology
with an exemplary – and personal –
customer service we can free the travel
manager to actually do their day job of
managing travel.
Not every travel management company
thinks like this but there are plenty out
there that do. While our point of
difference satisfies our clients'
requirement and
continues to deliver
value to customers we
have a bright future,
even though we are a
relatively small TMC.
58 THEBUSINESSTRAVELMAG.COM