Greg O’Neil (pictured left) is a man on a mission – he wants to bring an innovative, fresh approach to corporate travel in Asia Pacific and position BCD Travel as a strong local and regional player with a global footprint rather than a global player who happens to have a regional office in Singapore.

“In the last two years in Asia Pacific, we have acted as a global organisation and focused on multinational accounts with a global network,” said the president Asia Pacific for the global travel management company. “While we have done that well, we have missed the opportunities of regional and local business.”

As such, he’s reorganised the team, hired new sales staff to look after local, regional and global sales and drawn up a new vision statement that calls on his team to be, among other things, consultative, entrepreneurial, innovative and results- and value-driven.

“We want to put resources into growing and nurturing local and regional business and acting as their true partners,” he said.

It seems a sensible approach in these times. At a time when multinationals have cut corporate travel drastically, one segment that has been more resilient is the SME business travel market. This however continues to be the most elusive nut to crack for most of the global TMCs operating in the region.

“It is a difficult market to get to because it is so fragmented but perhaps that’s also because no one has ever really tried or had to because the global business was growing and we were all busy just servicing our global accounts,” said O’Neil.

The downturn is the perfect time to re-engineer the business, said O’Neil. “You’ve got a choice – to put your resources into a $1 million account and grow that relationship or to service a $10 million business where you have no relationship? You have to hedge your bets in these times.

“We have SMEs urging us to help them and we are consulting with them to get more efficiencies. We are getting out there to know the market and build relationships.

“Bigger companies are having a tougher time getting out of their cookie cutter approach.

“We are not sure we will win the bulk of the market in SME business but we will be better positioned for recovery.”

The new approach seemed to be working – he said BCD Travel won US$30 million worth of new business in the second quarter.

Apart from investing in client relationships, he is also investing in training, technology and alignment to give his team better ammunition to deliver on the mission. He’s put in a regional operations/technology team into the Singapore office, for example.

For the first half of 2009, O’Neil said that business volume was down by 20-30%. “Transactions have remained stable, in fact, are higher in India but the business mix has changed – premium to coach travel, for example.”

He sees tough times still ahead in the third quarter but is hopeful for the last quarter and 2010.

The biggest challenge of managing a business in the current climate is “to truly understand what the customer expectations are”.

“It’s hard to do that in a situation where you have no relationships. You are supposed to read an RFP and create a global solution. How do you then build your business into a growth business based on trust, integrity and alignment with the company?”