12 | Direct Travel

Direct Travel
2022 sales: $3.6 billion
Previous ranking: 11
Employees: 1,639 full-time, 94 part-time

7430 E. Caley Ave., Suite 320E
Centennial, CO 80111
Phone: (800) 223-1632
Website

Executives

CEO: Ed Adams
CFO: John Coffman
CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER: Darryl Hoover
PRESIDENT, CREATIVE GROUP: Janet Traphagen
EVP, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & STRATEGIES: Ronda Shipley
EVP, CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE: Christine Sikes
EVP, LEISURE TRAVEL: Gerard Bellino

Company facts

* Privately held company that sells directly to consumers for corporate travel, meetings and incentives, group travel and leisure vacations.

* 83% business, 10% leisure, 7% other.

* Works with 677 independent contractors.

* Owns Creative Group, a performance-management company specializing in meetings and event logistics, strategic meetings management and employee-recognition solutions.

* Member of Virtuoso.

2022 Developments

* Improved digital strategy by delivering virtual assistant Simon, online-booking tools, duty of care, reporting, itinerary/invoice services and messaging in several collaboration platforms. The strategy enables clients to determine how and where they engage and enables the company to extend management of activities such as invoice/itinerary retrieval, profile updates and reservation processing to travelers and travel arrangers.

* Partnered with a DEI consultant to create the Council of Champions to strengthen diversity in workforce recruitment and expand its supplier diversity program.

* Worked to ensure traveler safety as the pandemic's effects slowly receded and new challenges (such as the war in Ukraine) emerged. Teams helped extract travelers in dire situations.

Looking ahead

* Enhancing its AI offering by deploying a multilingual virtual assistant, transitioning more tasks to automation to allow advisors to spend more time on critical support interactions.

* Extending its AI and machine learning capabilities in the contact center to improve productivity of point-of-sale staff and create more self-service opportunities for clients. Actions include requests for invoices and itineraries, profile updates, Covid-19 information, passport/visa information and booking-tool password resets.

* Creating a Policy as a Service platform to centralize and standardize customer travel policy data across all consumption points. Benefits include enhanced agent productivity, expanded consultative services opportunities, transaction accuracy, travel policy adherence and travel policy awareness.

* Expanding and integrating services in collaboration platforms. The integration and deployment of the Direct2U app and Amadeus' Cytric booking platform within Microsoft Teams are recent examples. The company also recently completed a proof of concept for a large payment processor of integrating pre-trip approval and pretrip authorization within Slack. 

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