When it comes to solving problems, Allstar Travel Group’s founder and CEO Tammy Krings is known for having a few tricks up her sleeve. So as that The travel industry continues to face ups and downs, your ambition remains sky high.
Founded in 1995, ATG is a global travel management and consulting company serving over 140 countries and employing nearly 8,000 people worldwide. Companies can consolidate their worldwide trips, keep a detailed eye on the whereabouts of their employees, view data on expenses and much more – all in one place. The US headquarters are in New Albany.
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Founding ATG was a big leap for Krings, who began her career as an engineer specializing in aerospace and rocket science. Her first job after college was at North American Rockwell while stationed in Columbus, where she worked on the B-1 bomber and space shuttle projects. Eventually Rockwell ended his local activities and Krings was fired after turning down an offer to move.
Her next move was Bradford Travel Agency as Account Manager, where she stayed until the merger with Carlson Wagonlit Travel. She recalls doing a series of interviews with Bradford in which she suggested that she give her a “trial run” of the job for a few months before hiring her permanently – she was there for six years. She was later recruited to Thomas Cook Travel, where she led the American Express acquisition, but knew she wanted more.
A year later, she took the American Express bonus and used it as seed capital to start her business, then known as Troilo & Associates. Their motivation came from recognizing a niche in the market. At that time, the airlines announced that they would lower their commissions, which diminished the value of the travel agencies and resulted in customers now having to pay for some of the services that were once free.
Instead of starting an agency, Krings hoped to meet a need by becoming a travel consultant – with the difference that her income came only from clients and not from partnerships with other service providers.
“When the airlines reduced their commissions, it was quite a shock to the industry. So as a consultant who did a lot of business for us, ”says Krings. “We mainly worked with companies on moving to a paid service environment … that was a very compelling reason for people to hire us.”
She also adopted a business model where companies could outsource some of their travel functions to their company and outsource some to an agency, but travel agents didn’t support her with the idea. Instead of looking any further, Krings founded Travel Solutions, her own agency, which acted as an incubator for her business model and as a research center for new ways of managing travel.
Business was booming in 1998, says Krings, and things have picked up over the years.
Then 9/11 would forever change the way Americans traveled and did Krings business. And while 9/11 came as a shock to the entire nation, Krings had a disaster relief plan for moments of desperation.
She started the plan in May 2001 with the help of a former National Transportation Safety Board officer. She recalls that it was considered overly dramatic at the time, but because of her thoroughness, she and her team knew where each of their customers was within minutes of the Twin Towers hit and immediately began a recovery process.
“We really designed and developed what later became known in our industry as due diligence management,” says Krings. “We still call it crisis management. We use the term Guardian Services because it’s not just about responding to the event, it’s also about preparing people before they leave. “
With the travel industry in rapid decline, Krings knew that her consulting firm Troilo & Associates would not be able to recover in the time it would take for people to trust travel again. In January 2002 she decided to take over the company from her Travel Solutions agency.
Years passed and Krings made other changes to their business. In 2002, she began advising Fortune 500 companies worldwide and was looking for consortia to work with to consolidate global travel but couldn’t find a partner she liked. So she decided to do it herself in her typical fashion. Travel Solutions changed its name to Allstar Travel Group and has been an independent company since its inception.
Now Krings has offices all over the world, with their offices in the US, Germany, the Netherlands and France being their largest. The branch in the Netherlands, which opened in 2005, is also responsible for the ATG franchise organization – in particular Ctrip International from China, one of the largest travel service providers in the world, says Krings, is part of the ATG franchise organization.
One of its greatest years of success was 2019. The company had net sales of $ 7.2 billion worldwide, opened its office in France, and grew from 100 global franchises to over 140. But when COVID-19 struck, Krings looked back on its disaster Relief plan that has since been expanded to get people back on planes safely.
When asked about travel, it was no longer about when, where and why, but about how. Would the guidelines change? What would the incubation period be? Do travelers need a vaccination card?
Krings knew that while many travel companies accepted travel downtime as such, they could turn their business into a COVID asset and product powerhouse. To make this possible, she brought in Darrin Deck, vice president of technology and innovation.
Deck started at ATG in May 2020. He originally came as a contractor for a five-day job, but the IT director and head of data services resigned over the same period, he says. He admired the way Krings did business, so he offered to stay on the team.
“My impression in the past,” he says, “is that? [ATG] have really brought a high level of advice into their engagements, their clients, they have been very focused on due diligence, that is a priority for them and was before others talk about something like that. “
With Deck, ATG added resources for “Stay Safe”, specifically the COVID hotline, a personal consultation for customers to prepare them for the requirements for the area they are traveling to and to inform them of the current conditions. They also monitor customers’ travel routes for changes before and during the trip.
Online customers can also access a COVID-19 screening tool and tracker to view the latest COVID status for different areas on an interactive map.
For Christoph Carnier, President of the German Business Travel Association and Head of Travel, Vehicle Fleet and Events at Merk KGaA in Darmstadt, the consistent communication of ATG in times of need is the company’s outstanding quality.
“We found that the decision-making process was extremely fast, short hierarchies, flat hierarchies,” says Carnier. “We also felt that our needs as a customer were resolved really quickly and that they listened to us to really do something – we weren’t number 364 on a customer list.”
Merk KGaA, a science and technology company, has been with ATG for seven years and had an initial consultation for travel to the Middle East. Eventually, ATG was used to consolidate all of the company’s travel. When the pandemic broke out, their spending data declined by about 70 percent, Carnier says, but ATG’s COVID resources were critical to regaining comfort while traveling.
“Those who travel are much more comfortable knowing that someone is working and checking in the background [COVID-19 regulations]“Says Carnier.
Krings also saw an opportunity to provide PPE to encourage safe travel and, after researching companies she believed in, partnered with Copperline to offer a face mask exclusive to ATG – the washable, reusable six-layer mask consists of 22 percent pure copper thread and is more likely to kill the COVID-19 virus on contact.
“At first we thought, ‘Okay, we have to figure out how to get our travelers back on a plane because they were still on duty, maybe not that much, but they were still on duty,'” says Krings. “First of all, it was the driver. But when we started to do the math, we realized: Okay, that could give us a boost, and it did. “
And while COVID-19 has been a major source of change for ATG, Krings also had some ideas that could be realized with the help of Deck and Howie Honeycutt, the vice president of Operations and Shared Services, who were also introduced in 2020 .
“See [Krings’] Vision, the fact that a lot of companies just said, ‘Okay, we’re closing, we’re not doing anything,’ “says Honeycutt.” It obviously had to downsize where it needed to. But she’s really started to change focus and prepare him for a new vision. “
One of the largest projects is the launch of a number of projects designed for HR professionals. ATG Candidate enables recruiters to request travel bookings for candidates while keeping track of costs, and recruits can book their own trips through ATG’s digital platform. Also included in the suite are ATG Relocation and ATG Professionals, which can be used for employees relocating or contract employees who are traveling.
Other product launches include ATG Insights, which provides critical spend, budgeting, and forecasting data on an interactive dashboard, TravelSPACE, which enables customers to plan their trip based on preferred vendors, and multiple products that enable the collection, editing, and review of materials facilitate.
And the return to travel can come sooner than we think. While travel spending totaled $ 679 billion in 2020, a 42 percent decrease from 2019 spending, Honeycutt, who has over 25 years of travel experience, says he has stayed in spite of the rise of the Delta variant.
“What I see is that a lot of our larger companies, especially international travel companies, aren’t really there. But there is still domestic travel in the US, ”says Honeycutt. “People also use the Delta variant. They are still traveling and most of the companies I have spoken to say they are monitoring very closely at this point, but they are not changing their general travel policy. “
Still, Krings and her team are optimistic about the future of travel with the technology they have tackled and the new products to come that they hope will continue to give travelers the confidence they have to fly to need.
“Don’t be afraid to travel,” says Krings. “It’s a new world. And that is something we must pay attention to, but it shouldn’t prevent us from doing the things we love to do. And if traveling is one of those things, don’t be afraid of it. “
jdeyo@dispatch.com
@DeyoJessica
Allstar travel group (ATG)
Companies: Independent travel management and consulting company with over 140 offices worldwide.
Founder and CEO: Tammy Krings
Employee: 7,800 worldwide
Revenue: $ 7.2 billion in global net sales in 2019
