Trade distribution Investing for the future
T
raveltek chief executive Mal Barritt is new to the company but hardly new to travel. He stepped in to take over from founder Kenny Picken at
Traveltek’s East Kilbride headquarters on August 1 this year, but he has spent 26 years in the industry. He says: “I was at MyTravel when it
merged with Thomas Cook. I set up my own cruise-selling business which I ran for eight years, then ran luxury tour operator Destinology and the ITC Group.” Barritt acknowledges: “I’ve never run
a technology business before. It is a fresh challenge for me.” However, he sees this as positive: “I can look at it from the perspective of a customer. That is a different way of looking. This job couples my passions for travel and technology.” He believes the ability “to look through the lens of a customer” is one of the reasons Traveltek recruited him, saying: “I had been a customer of Traveltek twice in the past. I also ran two very tech-savvy travel businesses, Destinology and ITC, where we put together a technology platform and understood how to support it. We ran Destinology as a technology business which just happened to sell luxury holidays.” Traveltek attracted private equity firm
YFM to invest £5.3 million in 2016. Barritt says: “We’re three years into the cycle with the investors and have put together a [new] three-year plan.
Challenging times bring opportunity, says new Traveltek chief executive Mal Barritt
“This is a year of transition. We’ve pumped in a significant amount of money – £250,000 on infrastructure improvements for customers as we migrate to cloud-based infrastructure, and £500,000 on front-end and back-end resources. We’re bringing in new resources, making multiple investments in people and infrastructure.” At the same time, Barritt explains: “We decided to throttle back expansion to focus on the UK and Europe, North America and Australasia, and on protecting the interests of existing customers, on providing better services to them. We closed our offices in Dubai and Singapore.” However, the company retains a strong
presence outside the UK. “One of our largest clients is in the Netherlands – a new customer which operates across Europe,” he says.
THE UK and Germany
dominate the tour operator and travel agency sector in
Europe, but with the UK far out in front on turnover (Figure 46)
Investing in core platform Barritt’s aim is to “simplify the business model and standardise what we offer”. The Traveltek business has three parts, he explains: “First, on API [application programming interface] – all our content is integrated from 200 suppliers and enabled on an API, based on the suppliers a client wants to work with. “Second, our core operating platform iSell – a sealed booking system offering search and book and customer management and evolving into a product-management system. “Third, website journeys – we facilitate
Employing 250+ €bn
10 15 20 25 30 35 40
0 5
€2.3bn €30.8bn €18bn €6.4bn €1.2bn
FIGURE 46: TOUR OPERATOR/TRAVEL AGENCY TURNOVER Employing 50-249
Employing 10-49 €bn 10
0 2 4 6 8
€7.9bn €8.9bn €9.4bn €bn 10 €2.9bn €2.2bn
0 2 4 6 8
€6.7bn €4.9bn €3.9bn €3.1bn €2.8bn €bn 10
0 2 4 6 8
€9.3bn €4.3bn €4.3bn €4.6bn €4bn
Source: Eurostat, 2017
France Germany Italy Spain UK
Employing up to 9
Travel Weekly Europe Report 2019 | 29
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