Major overhaul at UK TMC

Corporate Traveller, part of the Flight Centre group, has closed four offices this year as part of a major restructuring programme.

In an exclusive interview with ABTN, Tom Walley, Corporate Traveller's general manager, said he wanted the business model to revolve around "hubs".

Walley, whose background is in the retail market with Flight Centre, said the hub business model would replicate the model used so successfully in his previous role.

He said he wanted consultants, business development managers and account managers in the same Corporate Traveller office, which meant closing some "outlying" offices.

Since May, offices in Exeter, Peterborough, Milton Keynes and Slough have closed.

"Trying to win business in places like Exeter, where there's not a lot of business, it just wasn't really working for us, to be honest," admitted Walley.

Most of the company's staff and clients have been moved into other UK offices that are a closer fit to the "hub" model.

Corporate Traveller has also opened seven new offices this year, with five in London, plus one in Edinburgh. The most recent to open was Oxford, on June 21.

Walley said the small and medium enterprise-focused TMC also wanted to have offices closer to clients.

"We had these outlying offices that we'd had for years in the company that weren't really co-located with other corporate travellers, FCMs or Flight Centres, and were servicing clients that weren't necessarily local to them," he said.

"One of our big things is local servicing. We wanted to make sure that we put our customer near to our staff, and we weren't really doing that.

"I also wanted to make sure that our consultants were near to our business development managers and our account management team, so that we could get this constant customer focus team.

"What I've found is that those three types of people - the account manager, the business development manager and the consultant - work best when they're in the same offices together, working with the client to make sure that we effectively service their needs.

"That wasn't happening in the outlying offices, because they didn't have business development managers and account managers located in the same place... So the decision was to form these hubs and relocate the business and the staff where possible into bigger hubs."

These hubs also mean it is easier to set up new offices, said Walley.

"Being part of the Flight Centre group, we have Flight Centre shops in hubs around the country. We've found that when we colocate corporate offices with flight centre shops it provides a really good employment feeder.

"We tend to move quite a few of our Flight Centre staff into teams, because they provide the expertise for Corporate Traveller... If you put leisure consultants into corporate offices it works really well, because they have a much better understanding of the air fares, of the customer. They're not stuck in that TMC rut, where they're moving from TMC to TMC. They've got a fresh outlook on the business."

The moving of offices meant some staff members chose to take redundancy packages, but overall the company has expanded, with 30 new staff members since January.

Walley said Corporate Traveller had won £15 million worth of new business since January, including a "significant" contract based in the new Oxford office, worth £1.5 million.