Comtec, a market-leading travel technology company in the U.K., opened a North American office in Alexandria, Va., and is targeting mid- to high-end wholesalers and tour operators with its distribution and back-office platform, Travelink.
The travel technology company, based in Wales, plays a role in about half of the vacation package sales in the U.K. with its business-to-business and business-to-consumer solutions and counts Thomas Cook and TUI Travel among its more than 100 clients, said Simon Powell, Comtec's CEO.
In the U.S., Vacation.com has an exclusive, multiyear agreement to use Comtec's travel agency booking platform, EZguider.
That means Comtec's U.S. operation, headed by Denise Womble, former Vacation.com vice president of membership services and technology, is not seeking to broaden its travel agency presence in the U.S. for now, although it is talking to agency groups in Canada.
Powell said U.S. tour operators and wholesalers have been ill-served by a fragmented technology market and that back-office management and sales systems lag behind comparable systems in the U.K., where the tech market for wholesalers is more consolidated.
Tour operators and wholesalers in the U.S. use a potpourri of platforms that lack flexibility and can't expand the infrastructure as sales systems to the consumer, Powell added.
'A very untapped market'
"We see it as a very untapped market from a technology perspective," Powell said.
And Womble, who before Vacation.com headed customer support and telesales for ARC, added: "We are looking for partners because we think we can help them change their businesses."
Powell described the Comtec platform, including its Travelgateway distribution system for suppliers and its Travelink tour operator solution, as a sort of leisure GDS that enables wholesalers to manage yield and flexibly build and price escorted tours.
For example, he said, Travelink can display the option of adding a tour guide and show how this would impact the bottom line.
"The whole tool is about productivity," he added.
Powell said Comtec was a market leader in the U.K.; was working with consultants to refine its solutions for the North American market; and that it had aggregated global flight and hotel content from a broad array of suppliers and distributors, including all four GDSs, for dynamic packaging.
"Suppliers know no borders, irrespective of the market," Powell said.
Regarding the economy's pressures, Powell argued that there was no slowdown in the tech market, because savvy wholesalers were investing in technology as a means of reducing their labor costs and making their operations more cost-efficient.
Comtec itself, which uses a transaction-based business model, shows no signs of an economic swoon. Launched in 1995 and co-founded by Powell, Comtec has more than 140 employees in the U.K., Belarus and the U.S. In 2007, Comtec, 51%-owned by U.K. private equity firm RJD Partners, recorded $7 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization on $25 million in revenue, Powell said.
In 2008, through a share buyback, Amadeus relinquished a 20% stake in Comtec.
Comtec has acquired five technology companies this year in Europe and is looking for technology acquisitions in the U.S. to round out its offerings, Powell said.