WASHINGTON -- Travelennium Inc. of Memphis was selected as the
official travel agency of Vice President Gore's presidential
campaign, effective May 1.
The account is estimated at $3 million in air during its
eight-month duration.
Dot Conley, chief executive officer of the 32-year-old, $40
million agency (called Omega Travel until it was renamed last
September), said it is Travelennium's first political account.
Conley said she has no political connections, but received a
request for proposals (RFP) about a year ago and went through a
selection process similar to bidding for a corporate account.
She said she has no idea how many agencies got the RFP, but
suspects some were located in Washington, where Gore's campaign was
based at that time. Since then, the campaign headquarters moved to
Nashville.
Conley said thinks Travelennium won partly because of its
location in Gore's home state of Tennessee, and partly because of
its products and services.
"It's a prestigious account. We feel good about it," she said.
"And I think we're the right size to handle it. Our forte is the $1
million to $5 million account, so it's a good match."
Conley said she expects campaign travel "to get off to a slow
start, then pick up heavily" between the mid-August Democratic
convention in Los Angeles and the Nov. 7 election.
Gore's campaign has designated four workers as travel
coordinators, "who will make the reservations for everybody," she
said.
Well, not quite everyone. As a sitting vice president, Gore
flies on Air Force Two and is billed for campaign-related
travel.
Travelennium hired two new agents who are dedicated to the
account and have extended hours. "This group seems to work late,"
commented Conley, adding that her agency installed a dedicated
phone line for the Gore campaign.
Campaign staffers "will use our Worldspan Trip Manager product
[for self-bookings] and depending on how much they use it, we may
need to hire more dedicated agents," she said. "I think [bookings]
will be a mixture of Travel Manager and calls."
She expects many of the air tickets to be multi-leg trips, as
campaign workers dart from place to place in what might be called
circle trips, rather than straight roundtrips.
For ticket delivery, "we're placing an STP [satellite ticket
printer] in Gore's Nashville headquarters," she said.
All sales will be credit card transactions, thus ensuring that
the agency will get paid. In past years, agents who handled
political accounts that paid in cash didn't always get their money
when campaigns exhausted their funds prematurely.
Conley, who's been with Travelennium for 18 years, said the
company's business mix is about 50% corporate, 30% leisure and 20%
government.
The agency is one of the pioneers of the federal government
market, and gets a good chunk of its leisure sales from four
vacation shops inside Rich's department stores in Atlanta.
The firm has nine walk-in offices, 11 corporate on-site
locations, a call center in Memphis, "plus STPs all over the
place."