NEW YORK -- SRG International changed its name to Synergi Jan. 1
and agreed to make McCord Travel Management, of Chicago, and
U.S.Office Products its exclusive U.S. affiliates. The moves are
part of of the consortium's effort to remake itself into a major
industry player after a difficult 1997, when some of its best and
brightest agencies left the flock in rapid succession.
Under the new structure, all of USOP's and McCord's agency
subsidiaries will become Synergi, and USOP's agencies plan to phase
out membership in other organizations, including Woodside, Hickory
and CorpNet.
Synergi is continuing to expand with new affiliates, including
Millenium Team, in Italy; Diners World Travel, in Singapore and
Kuala Lumpur, and Mercury Travels Ltd., of India.
After assembling a team of account managers last year, Synergi
said it will pursue multinational consolidation.
The consortium's transformation began a little more than a year
ago, when one of the original SRG members, Professional Travel, of
Englewood, Colo., was acquired by USOP, a brash, young
business-to-business supplier of coffee, credenzas and general
office supplies. The Washington-based office products company
planned to take the hub-and-spoke approach of airline routing and
use it to cross-sell products across similar channels. Essentially,
Professional Travel's customers would buy their plane tickets and
manila folders from the same vendor.
As part of this strategy, USOP, with the help of its new point
man, Professional Travel president Ed Adams, acquired several
regional powerhouses, many of whom happened to be members of SRG.
This included SRG originals Mutual Travel, of Seattle, and
Associated Travel, of Santa Ana, Calif., two of the largest
agencies in the Western U.S. According to several current and
former SRG members, this made a lot of people within the group
nervous. By October, 1997, USOP quickly had become one of the
largest agencies in the country, with about $1 billion in annual
volume and plans to double that by 2000.
By November, Total Travel Management, of Troy, Mich., an SRG
founding member, and Travel and Transport, of Omaha, Neb., joined
Woodside. In an earlier interview, Frank Dinovo, former president
of Travel and Transport, cited the USOP expansion as a reason for
the move as well as Woodside's lower fee structure and more
extensive geographic coverage.
Meanwhile, Travel One, another SRG original, felt it had
outgrown the original group. The $800 million Mount Laurel, N.J.,
company was in talks to join Dusseldorf, Germany-based First
Business Travel and its U.S. partner, Hickory Travel Systems.
Travel One officials said they felt they had outgrown SRG, which
was founded when all of the agencies were large regional
players.They also said First gave them a lot more flexibility to
operate with the global partners they preferred.
"I don't think you can conclude there's anything wrong with the
organization," said Charles Roumas, senior vice president at Travel
One. "There's an evolutionary thing going on there. The objectives
of the organization and the profiles of its members are going
through changes, as well. I think [SRG is] a more cohesive group
that wants more direct commitment from the group instead of going
outside the group."
With all the changes within SRG, the group was forced to make a
decision. Does it try to maintain the old focus or move in a new
direction? Essentially, it reinvented itself. "I knew even at the
early stages of our career something had to happen in the U.S. to
make us a more effective competitor," said J.J. Doran, president of
Synergi. "The hardest part about this" is that USOP's growing
influence may have cost some "very good partners."
Time will tell whether they succeed.