The Conversation NEXT APPOINTMENT PLEASE
The Appointment Group travel management company took on America, successfully, but its current strategy has created a far more challenging goal, as Gillian Upton finds out
A RESIDENTIAL strip in Kilburn Lane, London, is an unlikely place to base a business that deals with the glitz and glamour of the music and touring business, that daily copes with the travel predilections, minutiae and daily changes in travel plans of divas of stage and screen and their vast entourages. But its joint owners are at pains to point out that their business is much more than that and, as it rolls on to its 30th year in business next year, it is unveiling a strategy to change the face of the company. Maurice Veronique and John Gianquitto are
The Appointment Group (TAG). Veronique is probably the more high profile of the two; putting his face above the parapet in 2008 as Chairman of the GTMC. And a great job he did too, dusting off the old-school ties and gentleman’s club atmosphere of the association, ridding it of some of the dead wood, and bringing in fresh ideas, from tackling Generation X to appointing political lobbyists to put business travel on the agenda. Veronique and Gianquitto are TAG's two fifty- something co-founders, chairmen and chief executive officers. They are two boys from Maidenhead that hit upon the idea of galvanising Veronique’s skills of running a business with Gianquitto’s travel specialism in the music business. They acquired an existing travel business in Sheffield in 1988 and the rest, as they say, is history. Along the way they eclipsed the rival company run by Harvey Goldsmith (today one of their regular clients), and achieved the turnover and profits in their three-year business plan in just three months. “It just exploded,” recalls Gianquitto. Travel by Appointment was their launch vehicle some 23 years ago, and today it is still the engine that drives the group in terms of profitability, which goes a long way to understand their current dilemma. Despite spawning five other divisions since, TAG has been hoisted by its own petard, as Maurice points out: “We’re hindered by our reputation as a music-only agent and we’re not getting on the right pitch lists.” Their clients have a certain demographic too as TAG has been able to be “incredibly selective” says Veronique. The strategy this year – at the start of a new
three-year business plan – is to consolidate its new US operation, for selective global growth, and to establish The Appointment Group as the overall brand. This last mission will change the misconceptions of the company in the marketplace as a TMC dealing only with the music business. They aim to weight the divisions equally and generate as much cross- pollination as possible. “It’s happening,” says Veronique of progress to date. “We’re getting more business from existing clients.” The 90 staff in Kilburn work across travel, music, classical, events, golf and leisure, and while not a mass-market TMC offering low-cost hotels and selling lots of train tickets, the pair know they should be getting far more business from existing clients. They’re aiming for those corporates with an annual travel spend ranging between £500,000 and £3million.
It’s a tough call as what they can offer corporates relies heavily on their expertise in the music business, the division they want to play down. It is also this division that is driving their aggressive US expansion, with newly opened offices in New York and Los Angeles. To understand how Music by Appointment operates gives a greater insight into how TAG will operate in the future. At any one time the music division has 120 artists and bands on the road and will have booked and planned the entire movement schedule on the road, of which there are six elements: advance crew, crew, universal crew, dancers, band and VIPs. ”The touring side is the most demanding and challenging,” says Veronique. “They’re all travelling independent to each other and changing their mind every second of the day.” With such a high-touch service, the company
24 I THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
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