HRG chief celebrates Aussie growth and new contracts

The Mole took the opportunity this week of having a private chat with the Global and Australian chiefs of what appears to be one of the world’s largest and most successful travel management companies

David Radcliffe, [right] is global CEO of HRG, operating in 72 countries and Carl Buerckner runs HRG in this region and they told me that HRG is owned by Hogg Robinson, a group that offers a comprehensive range of services through its HRG worldwide network, including travel management and fulfilment services, low cost transactions, consultancy services, sports, expense management and processing, conferences, meetings and events management.

Quite a portfolio, but I asked David, recently named as one of the 25 Most Influential Executives for the business travel industry in 2006 by the Business Travel News for the third time,
why he was here and what he thought of Aus and this is what he said.

“I am here to catch up and celebrate because this has been a huge year for HRG in Australia with Carl and his team not only winning the highly prestigious Federal Government travel management contract, in the face of extremely stiff competition, which we know upset a lot of people, but also because last year we won, what is probably the world’s first fully integrated end to end outsourced travel management solution in the form of three high profile contracts with the Queensland Government.”

“Together these formed the first fully outsourced Travel Management System (TMS) ever to be supplied to a Government body in the world and manages every single aspect of travel for them in their $120m annual spend, in all its aspects including expense management and administration, allowing them to divert their resources to where needed most rather than managing travel and as a result getting a much better bang for the public buck, which has to be good news for Queensland”

“We have become a business that provides added value to our client as we would not survive if we based our business solely on transactions in an era of reducing  commissions and fees, which is an outdate model and one that will not continue to exist into the future.”

“Our latest win further demonstrates our global public sector expertise and ability to tailor a solution to meet the Federal Government’s unique requirements and underlines HRG’s ability to cater for clients that require significant technology expertise, involving solutions such as data capture and consolidation, secure reporting and ticketing fulfilment, combined with highly skilled consultants offering a personal approach.”

I asked them what they thought of Australia’s position globally in terms of usage and travel management and they said, “We believe that Australia is leading the world in online usage of TMS, much further ahead than Europe and ahead of the USA and we believe this is because your corporate demand has a high level of domestic bookings which are very straightforward on line, but we also believe that you will continue to be early adopters by growing international on line bookings.”

In closing David and Carl told me that they believed that their business globally was one that would continue to grow at an very high rate and that events were an area that they were determined to expand in this region, working into Asia with some exciting new appointments and Carl leading the team.

David said, “I know that I can go back to the UK confident that this region is not only in very safe hands but ones that will continue to grow our business exponentially.”

Check out HRG by visiting – www.hrgworldwide.com.

Report by The Mole