Interview: James Diaz, CEO, Absolute Travel Management

James Diaz is CEO of newly launched Absolute Travel Management

James Diaz announced in January the formal launch of Absolute Travel Management. The former UK head of Travel Planet and Amex GBT executive is returning to his entrepreneurial roots, establishing a new London-based agency focusing on the SME market that "combines technology and high-touch service and eliminates rigid, 'computer-says-no' processes". Diaz tells BTN Europe about the new business and his ambitions for it.

BTN Europe: What was your motivation for launching a new TMC?

James Diaz: I’ve always been quite entrepreneurial. A lot of people know me as the Amex guy – the credit cards then at GBT – and then I joined Travel Planet. But before all that I had my own company, a chauffeur business, which I sold 70 per cent of to a Singapore-based company and stayed on as MD. I sold the remaining 30 per cent later, but at the age of 26 I was on the UK board for the company, and they’re a big player. I was lucky because I left it just before Uber entered the market.

I’ve worked at Amex GBT on mega deals – companies spending more than £200 million a year on travel – and then at the other end of the spectrum at Travel Planet, working with SMEs, and that’s where service really comes into play. But it’s also an untapped market and decisions are made a lot quicker by SMEs. Even the big TMCs realise that and have begun targeting SMEs.

I remember one of my first sales presentations after leaving GBT and at the end of the presentation the customer asked when we could send them the contract – I was expecting another two years of talking to them, an RFP and then implementing! I love that SMEs can move so quickly.

BTN Europe: What makes you different to other TMCs serving this market?

James Diaz: I know a lot of people say this, but it really is about the service. There’s a big focus on technology [in the industry] which of course is extremely important, but I think we sometimes forget why TMCs were created in the first place – to provide support and be at the end of a phone. We want to avoid chatbots and automated messages like ‘your call is important to us’ while customers are trying to get through. I want people to feel like they have their own travel EA. That’s how my chauffeur business succeeded – it was all about personal service.

BTN Europe: How is the company funded? Who’s invested in it?

James Diaz: I always wanted to take a crowdsourcing approach and that’s what I did to begin with, but I also got introduced to a company, OpsTalent, who are specialists in outsourcing customer service. It’s a new market [business travel] for the owner there, but he liked what we’re doing and made a significant investment as a seed round.

BTN Europe: How big is your team and what’s their background?

James Diaz: There’s seven of us at the moment. We have Mark Firth who is head of services and Emma Mawson who is operational director, plus four agents, who I worked with at Travel Planet. And we’ll be using OpsTalent for out-of-hours phone calls after 10pm UK time. Initially I was all about controlling the calls because many TMCs I speak to say their biggest issues are with the third parties they use for out-of-hours service but this is different because they’re invested in the company.

BTN Europe: How many customers do you have and what’s the pipeline looking like?

James Diaz: We’re going live with our first customer at the moment which unfortunately got delayed a bit. We’ve two or three others already in implementation, but that’s the significant one. We’re looking at £2 million in spend from them annually so it’s not bad as a start-up – most new TMCs need to get to £10 million as quickly as possible and we’d like to be at that level in just over a year. That’s a viable number with what we have in the pipeline. The first ten will be the hardest but the next ten should be easier after that. Beyond that, the five-year plan... all I would say is that we’re targeting significant growth.

BTN Europe: What sectors and markets are those customers in? Will you be specialising in any in particular?

James Diaz: We’re looking at SMEs in general at the moment. We’ve spoken with [companies in] manufacturing, IT, financial services… but it’s pretty broad at the moment. We’re looking at UK-based and European customers.

BTN Europe: Explain the relationship with Global Travel Collection (a division of the Internova Group) which was mentioned in your launch collateral.

James Diaz: It’s a way for us to get to market quicker because we can utilise their IATA license and their significant volume in negotiations so we have access to their airline and hotel deals. It’s a revenue share relationship. So every time we benefit from one of their deals they get a percentage.

BTN Europe: And what’s your revenue model – is it traditional transaction fees?

James Diaz: Yes, but we can also offer subscription and management fees. It can be tailored. But the first three clients are all happy with transaction fees. It’s the cleanest model.

BTN Europe: Which GDSs and tech providers are you working with?

James Diaz: Sabre is our go-to GDS. I really like the Atriis booking tool, which has a lot of NDC content, and we’re also the UK launch customer for Mesh which started out in expenses and payments but built their own OBT. Our agents have been testing that recently. As a third booking tool we can go down the route of Concur because GTC already have the Concur agreements, but they would need to be a decent sized customer. That’s enough for now unless a client really wants something else. Our investor develops tech for quite a lot of customers so could look at that in the future but it’s not a priority right now. With the customers onboard so far, we’re looking at something like 70 per cent of bookings being online, and if more comes offline we’ve got the infrastructure in place.

BTN Europe: Are there any other advisors or potential partnerships in place?

James Diaz: Yes, I’ve got a good number of people onboard as advisors but we can’t name them yet and we have a potential strategic partnership with a North American TMC which we hope to announce in due course. We have some other irons in the fire too with potential partnerships. Right now, though, we have investment and we have all the infrastructure in place, so our focus is on winning new business and getting our pipeline over the line and implemented.