Travel and Transport, with almost $3 billion in sales in 2014, underwent a major transition last year with the retirement of longtime CEO William Tech, who had headed up the company since 1998. But according to Kevin O’Malley, his successor, the transition created barely a ripple.
“I’ve been here for 21 years,” said O’Malley, “and seven of the eight officers who had been running the company are still here. Also, as a 100% employee-owned company, we have been discussing this for four years, although we didn’t make the succession public until early in 2014.”
Travel and Transport has seen consistent and strong growth over the decades. “When I came here,” said O’Malley, “we had about 300 people. Now we have over 1,300 and still growing.” And the company has its eyes set firmly on further expansion. Said O’Malley, “We made three acquisitions of agencies in the past few years, with the largest being Ultramar. All three have turned out well for us, and Ultramar continues to operate under its own name because they have a strong brand with very specific verticals in fashion, law, banking and finance and pharmaceuticals.
“We remain very focused on the acquisition side. If there is one strategic focus it is to grow outside the U.S. Although we are one of the largest shareholders in Radius [the international agency network] and will continue to use them for part of our growth, we will also go into bigger, more strategic markets on our own. We have a lot of that in the works.”
Travel and Transport is No. 12 on the 2015 Travel Weekly Power List.
Internally, as with most travel management companies (TMCs), technology is key for Travel and Transport. “The bigger TMCs are also big tech companies,” said O’Malley. “We have about 110 IT professionals and were one of the first to release a mobile solution, which in our case is called Dash. We have a lot of proprietary software on the reporting side and are spending a lot of money to find out how to take big data and feed it into reporting solutions. What I see is TMCs taking ownership of their own technology solution set so they can stay ahead, although sometimes you can’t help but use third parties.
“One of our customers is Gallup, the polling company, and we work with them to find out what is most important to travelers. That is one reason we created Points 2 Points, our loyalty division, which rewards employees for following travel policy. We have rewards for companies as well as individuals, with contributions made to charities of their choice.”
Despite its business-heavy legacy, Travel and Transport is also making serious investments on the consumer side. “We are talking about creating demand on the leisure side,” said O’Malley, “and will have announcements around that shortly that we think will create a lot of buzz.”
Travel and Transport is one of the Power List companies that has created its own Travel Academy and, said O’Malley, “If you ask the next generation about the travel agency industry, they will say it’s a dinosaur. Meanwhile, we are coming off our five best years in our history, so that means we haven’t told our story well.
"We need to be spending a lot more time telling our story to millennials, that this is a great place to work, a fun industry and [they] should become part of it.”
View Travel and Transport's entry in the 2015 Power List.