Travel management company ATPI is making eight of its proprietary technology modules available to other TMCs via new standalone company TripStax.
The eight modules that comprise the “premium and proven tech stack” – Analytics, Approve, Content, Docs, Mobile, Portal, Profile and Track – have been developed by ATPI as its own travel management platform and are underpinned by ‘The Core’ which centralises traveller profile, booking and invoice data.
Incorporated in 2020, TripStax is operating as an independent business with investment from the ATPI Group and its owners Intermediate Capital Group (ICG), and counts ATPI CEO Ian Sinderson among its board of directors. TripStax is headed up by chief executive officer and company director Jack Ramsey who joined ATPI in 2020 to spearhead the move. He was previously director of global sales at Travelport Hotelzon and is the son of ATPI chairman Graham Ramsey.
The company currently employs more than 90 staff including chief technology officer Scott Wylie and chief commercial officer Mathias Andersson.
The intellectual property has been transferred from ATPI to TripStax and the TMC will remain the new company’s flagship customer. Meanwhile, a ‘major’ TMC in North America is in the midst of implementing the tech stack and the company is close to sealing deals in Germany and Spain.
It is currently managing the equivalent of three million bookings per year but that figure is expected to double by the end of 2022, said Jack Ramsey, who explained the rationale behind the launch.
“The industry is very fragmented and many TMCs’ tech stacks are just made up of multiple third-party vendors. We have the central piece and all these modules. We’re reducing cost and complexity for TMCs and reducing the minefield of integrating multiple partners,” he told BTN Europe.
“This is not about ATPI needing to siphon off its tech to make money. ATPI is a profitable business which is coming out of the pandemic in better shape than many TMCs,” said Ramsey. “This is proven technology and it’s being done because there is opportunity.”
Ramsey said TMCs can select which modules they wish to utilise but the cost effectiveness increases if more are taken since they are only charged once for “ingestion of booking, profile or finance data regardless of how many times that data is processed within one of the modules in the stack” – as opposed to being charged a transaction fee by multiple different providers.
“Our vision is to empower mid- to small-scale TMCs to become more competitive against their tech-led rivals, level the playing field, and significantly enhance the service they give to their corporate customers,” said Ramsey.
“Everything below the mega-TMCs is our opportunity. We can help them centralise everything. What we’re doing is pretty profound. It’s a statement to the industry that a different commercial model can work.”
All the technology can be overbranded and a small TMC could implement modules in “a couple of weeks”, with a large TMC implementing all modules and with a multitude of profiles taking “more like four months” in the case of its unnamed North American customer.
Ramsey said TripStax is focused on “looking after the data” and would not, for example, “build a booking tool from scratch”, but “will fill any stack gaps through best-in-breed partnerships or by acquisition,” with two purchases in the pipeline.
The central component of the offering, The Core, “consumes, enriches and manages traveller profile, booking and financial data” and is “responsible for the ingestion of booking content” from all GDS providers as well as low-cost carrier aggregators, NDC content aggregators such as Travelfusion, and direct NDC connections.
ATPI, which was ranked the UK's 11th largest TMC in 2021, is retaining some proprietary technology as a competitive USP.