Singapore – A new group of travel management companies (TMCs) with a combined annual travel volume of US$2.6 billion has hit town. Calling itself Global Experts in Travel (GET), the group is a global joint venture of 20 TMCs, most of whom are stakeholders and representing a different country.

Up against big boys such as BTI, Carlson Wagonlit, TQ3 and American Express Business Travel (Amex BT), GET aims to establish itself as a brand to be reckoned with in the next 18 months. To get its name out there, it will be attending trade shows and sponsored events targeting specific markets. Big clients it has already secured include Agere Systems and Delphi.

GET’s strategy is to reach out to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that may feel more comfortable working with a smaller travel company. Its proposition to clients – think global, act local – is also a business practice.

CEO Ms Linda Garback said:“We will be service-oriented and culturally driven. Partners will share best practices and have the same service level agreement. What we don’t want is the cookie-cutter approach other big agencies tend to practise...there will be no generalisation of service for our clients.”

In fact the agencies of Ms Garback, Ms Barbara Asmussen (director, GET Sao Paulo, Brazil), Mr Andrew Gay (managing director, GET Auckland, New Zealand) and Mr Gaurav Sundaram (director Asia and CEO, GET Bangalore, India), were all fully or partially owned by Rosenbluth before its acquisition by Amex. The four opted to buy out Rosenbluth when the merger took place.

GET plans to sign up three more partners and “have the whole world covered”. Countries where it is seeking partners include China, Japan, Hong Kong and France.

Recent signings include Singapore-based Pacific Arena (formerly P&O Travel), which was a previous partner of Radius, another global travel company.

Ms Garback said once all the partners were secured, the group intended to use its stronger bargaining power to go back to suppliers and renegotiate their vendor agreements. Clients were expected to benefit from the cost savings although she said it was too early to tell how much discounting there would be.

Benefits GET partners and their clients would reap include the use of a multilingual global travel portal that is compatible with all GDSs and can be customised to conform to the travel policies governing each traveller within each client company, in addition to tracking his movements and reporting on T&E transactions.

There is also an online global hotel programme that has an inventory of 30,000 properties at rates negotiated by the group.