TradeBytes

Carlson WagonLit looking to franchise

Four partners already onboard

Bhisham Mansukhani - Mumbai

Business travel major Carlson Wagonlit (CWT), is now looking to build a network of franchisees to tap the Indian hinterland citing a catchment of SMEs keen to manage their travel costs. This initiative, Berthold Trenkel, COO of CWT, cautioned, is however only transient and part of the multinational's thrust for consolidating its Indian business.

CWT currently has 11 offices in India, all of them wholly-owned, and has opted for the franchisee template with the primary objective of tapping tertiary Indian cities and towns which are unlikely to be part of a multi-location agency. "We have signed on four partners and are looking at signing on at least another three. From the perspective of integrating smaller and interior cities into our network, these partners who have their agencies will increase our penetration of the market. They will become part of the overall CWT network so that our client base receives the same level of value as the ones in metros," Trenkel said. While CWT will not own their business, the franchisees will represent it and have access to its systems.

The franchisees would have to be IATA agents and would have to pay CWT a fee at the onset. "It is not a long term strategy for India," Trenkel warned, "Although it has been one in China where we have 36 partners. Yet, I see it more as a transient phenomenon because once e-ticketing sets in, local representation will not be required."

Trenkel also hinted at the possibility that CWT on the cusp of acquiring Indian companies, saying that it was open to the idea of inorganic growth in India. "We have acquired companies in a lot of the markets we operate in. Single-location companies have been selling out to global companies." CWT has also embarked on a quality-inclined client satisfaction initiative in India, under which it is streamlining processes and consolidating its business. It also plans to introduce some of its leading global technology tools here, including client profiling and CWT Discovery which is a reporting tool that provides companies and individual business travellers with an update of the volume of travel and expenditure for every aspect of it. A travel portal specific to India will also be introduced soon.