The former CEO of North America for travel management company CTM, Chris Thelen, and the TMC’s former general manager UK, Julie Cope, have teamed up to launch TakeTwo Travel Solutions.
The start-up TMC is targeting premium SMEs initially in the UK and Europe with plans to expand to the US.
It has already signed clients with combined pre-Covid annual travel spend of £11.5 million and has a new business pipeline of a further £40 million. Confirmed clients include organisations from the finance, investments and architecture sectors.
Thelen and Cope, respectively chief executive officer and managing director of the new company, have recruited 20 staff, the majority of whom were victims of swingeing job cuts at TMCs – including CTM – during the course of the pandemic.
The team is currently working remotely but expects to move into an office further down the line while an announcement regarding a US operation is expected before the year’s end.
TakeTwo's vision is to “provide high-level personalised global travel services to international SME corporations” and to high net worth individuals.
Thelen has returned to the UK after a four-year stint as CEO of CTM’s US business. In 2004 he led the management buyout of Chambers Travel Group, its European expansion, and in 2015 its sale to Corporate Travel Management.
Cope, meanwhile, was among those made redundant at CTM in July 2020.
“We’re targeting premium SMEs where travel is a crucial component of what they do and need the support,” Thelen told BTN Europe. “Everyone can have great technology now – there’s so much out there – but you’ve got to have the right structure, strategy and vision, and it’s about how you marry it with service and people and relationships.”
The TMC will also offer clients self-booking technology – but would not disclose which tool – and also expects to self-build some technology with an eye on providing it on a subscription basis.
“The clients we’ve signed so far can’t wait to get on planes. They need to travel – they can’t do everything virtually,” said Thelen. “Yes, we’ll have clients that are a cut-down version of what they were pre-Covid but it’s those where there’s more complexity that we’re targeting.”
Thelen said the TMC will serve businesses with up to £10 million in annual business travel spend in Europe and could ultimately handle “several hundred millions' worth of business” through organic growth and acquisition.
“I’m a growth CEO, not a cost-cutter. I’ve taken businesses from nowhere and grown them significantly,” said Thelen, who is financing the start-up operation himself.
“We saw how the market was moving to online TMCs but now it’s moving on again and corporates need hands-on service. This is the right time to get back in the game, just as corporates are beginning to move and thinking about the post-Covid world.”
• Read the full interview with Chris Thelen here.