Accelerated consolidation in the travel management company space was inevitable amid the Covid-19 pandemic, and American Express Global Business Travel pulled off a massive move in that regard this year with the acquisition of Egencia, Expedia Group’s corporate travel division.
The acquisition, announced in May and completed in November, solidified GBT’s status as the world’s largest TMC while giving it a new foothold among small and midsized clients, which is Egencia’s bread and butter. While Egencia remains a distinct brand within GBT, GBT CEO Paul Abbott said the two together are a “winning formula” by being able to offer a wide range of solutions for different travel program needs.
“In many other industries, companies have a range of products,” Abbott told BTN sibling publication The Beat following the acquisition. “I don’t think TMCs have to be one-size-fits-all.”
Besides the new SME client base, the acquisition also netted GBT an additional technology platform following its 2016 acquisition of KDS and its Neo booking tool. Expedia, meanwhile, took a 14 percent stake in GBT, valued at $750 million, and expanded a long-term hotel content agreement through Expedia Partner Solutions.
As the acquisition was announced, Abbott pledged to “invest in” and “aggressively grow” the platform and team, and as a signal of his intention to follow through with that, Egencia within a few weeks of the acquisition announced a “major recruitment drive” to hire about 100 new full-time, tech-focused employees across the United States, Europe and India. Egencia president Mark Hollyhead, who kept his role following the acquisition, told BTN that drive will make the platform “much richer by increasing our product expertise, our engineering expertise and investing in data sciences.”
Egencia was not GBT’s only major acquisition this year. In January, the TMC announced that it had acquired Ovation Travel Group, which includes Ovation Travel, Lawyers Travel and Chartwell Travel. Ovation, which claimed $1.6 billion in annual sales on Travel Weekly’s 2020 Power List, also has remained a separate division within GBT.