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Corp. Travel world attendees air distribution issues.

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New York -- There's no rush among buyers to go offshore for agency or other call services, but the largest and newest travel distributors are gearing up in such places as India and the Philippines. Executives from American Express, Cendant, Expedia, Orbitz, Sabre, Travelocity and WorldTravel BTI told buyers at Corporate Travel World here last month that the decision to use those services is up to them.

"We follow our customers," said Mike Buckman, WorldTravel BTI CEO and chairman of TRX. "We're prepared to work with them to do it. We will have one or more offshore installations this year tied to a customer's interest, but we're not doing it in a general sense in 2004." One WorldTravel client, Siemens Shared Services, is running a pilot travel management service from India. TRX customer Expedia will "probably investigate that as well," said Expedia Corporate Travel president Matt Hulett. "It just makes good business sense to have different choices."

TRX recently promoted to executive vice president Vic Pynn, formerly an Amex vice president responsible for launching offshore activities in India and the Philippines. At Amex, "We have dabbled in offshore servicing," said Pare Arway, executive vice president and general manager of North America corporate travel. "We started just over a year ago in the Philippines, and there's a small test in India as well. We don't have very much business there yet. It may grow, it may not. We view it in response to a customer need. We would never drive a customer into an offshore center without the customer making that decision. The customer can [lave ally number of choices, from VIP services to onsites to local centers to mega call centers to fully online to offshore. The cost of providing those services can be plotted on a graph."

Sabre Travel Network president John Stow said Travelocity's recent decision to outsource some of its leisure travel support to Indian firm WNS generated bad press, but "you can't create more jobs if you're not making money," he said. Travelocity Business president Ellen Keszler said her firm would make offshore "an option for the corporate customer. Some companies want nothing to do with it for security or philosophical reasons, but some are interested. We'll likely provide it as an alternative to customers if they want the lowest-cost alternative, or they can choose onshore."

While Cendant and Orbitz have tested the offshore waters, officials with both reported no demand from corporate clients.

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