Travel Counsellors for Business

COMPANY PROFILE

Key staff

Steve Byrne, chief executive officer
Kieran Hartwell, managing director, corporate
Kirsten Hughes, UK MD & chief commercial officer
Jim Eastwood, global sales director
Jon Bauer, chief technology officer

Main industry sectors

Agriculture and other rural, construction, defence and aerospace, engineering, financial and professional services, healthcare and pharmaceutical, hotels, tourism and catering, information technology, manufacturing, mining, music and film touring, oil and gas, sport

Services in addition to business travel

Consultancy, group travel, incentives, leisure travel, meetings and events, passport and visa services, sustainability programmes, traveller wellbeing services, venue sourcing, VIP travel

Type of company

Private equity owned by Vitruvian Partners

Awards and accreditations

Queen’s Awards for Enterprise

Online transactions

3%

Transactions

Air 60% | Hotel 27% | Rail 5% | Car 5% | MICE 2% | Other 1%

Trips

Short-haul 54% | Long-haul 46%

Top destinations

Short-haul: United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy
Long-haul: USA, UAE, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Canada

Office locations

Manchester & across the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, UAE, South Africa, Ireland

Association and network membership

GlobalStar, The BTA

Full-time equivalent staff

Over 1,900 Travel Counsellor business owners and 285 FTEs globally 

Average length of service (years)

5 

Average industry experience (years)

19 

ESG/CSR/DEI policies

• Three Make a Difference days annual paid leave to employees who wish to take part in charity fundraising and activities 
• Payroll giving scheme, enabling staff to make pre-tax donations to their chosen charity
• Halving carbon footprint by 2030; reach net zero by 2050
• Providing customers with a reliable figure for the carbon footprint of their travel
• Signposting hotels with reputable sustainability accreditations that are recognised by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council through the Green Leaf programme
• Educating Travel Counsellors and colleagues to enable them to create more sustainable travel itineraries and to adopt more eco-friendly day-to-day working practices
• Building and championing a diverse, caring and inclusive workplace which supports a truly diverse workforce
• Travel Counsellors is pursuing a three-year positive action roadmap driving change, championed by its Diversity & Inclusion Counsel and networks

GDS

Travelport

Online booking tools

Phenix proprietary booking platform, Vibe, Trainline for Business

Expense management tools

Not provided

Other technology (I=in-house, T=third-party)

Air reshopping T 
Business intelligence I (Phenix MI)
Disruption management I 
Hotel reshopping T 
Mobile itinerary app I (MyTC app)
Peer benchmarking I 
Personalised trip recommendation I 
Profile management I 
Quality assurance I 
Sustainability reporting I 
Traveller tracking T (ELocate)
Travel risk management I 

Other technology

MyTC payment portal, (proprietary), Trees4Travel CO2 reporting and carbon offsetting, ConfermaPay

Technology strategy 

To build inhouse and utilise third party technology to enhance platform. 

NDC content 

Direct connects to major carriers and Travelfusion API. Direct connectivity to BA NDC. NDC Direct Connect, aggregator NDC, Travelport NDC (soon)

Biggest innovation of 2022 

Evolution of the proprietary Phenix platform to allow individual Travel Counsellor franchises to collaborate across larger client accounts