Interview: James Diaz, CEO, 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.