When travel companies were buckling under financial pressure due to uncertainties ruling the global travel scenario, International Travel House notched up a profit of Rs 6.58 crore (PAT), earned foreign exchange to the tune of Rs 7.32 crore and paid a dividend of 25 per cent, which is more than double of last year’s 10 per cent dividend. What’s more, in the current financial year, the company is looking at 24 per cent growth in billing which means an increase of 12 per cent in the bottomline.

Anil Bhandari

According to Anil Bhandari, managing director, ITH, the secret of the company’s success lies in upgradation of technology, simplifying operations and reducing cost of operation. “We have benchmarked our quality with ISO 9001 certification and are planning to get a six sigma certification. Standardisation of work process has simplified procedures and helped us to reduce work force from 445 to 400 people. We work on an Oracle base platform to provide speedy and reliable information and simplify business processes.”

The total accounting of the company is online through a travel accounting package, which enables the corporate office to monitor the billings generated through its 12 network locations and offers online MIS billings to clients. Within the next three months a software will be reportedly developed internally and interfaced with front office CRS. “When the customer logs in for a booking, his profile, request for tickets, visa status, preferences, company entitlement, seat availability in airlines etc will appear on our screen. The moment a booking is done, an invoice will get generated automatically and enter into ITH books and the client’s books. When the client clicks on ticket received and payment released the payment for the transaction will be released from the bank and credited to the ITH account. All within 15 minutes,” explains Bhandari.

The only ISO 9001 certified company in its areas of operation, ITH is based on the total travel management concept. The value proposition being, to build a one-stop-shop, offering a whole gamut of travel related services from corporate travel, car rentals, to inbound and outbound leisure travel, MICE, domestic coach tours, foreign exchange and visas. The major share of the profit comes from corporate travel, followed by car rentals.

During the last couple of years travel agencies saw bottomlines dwindling as capping of commissions, non-commissionable fares and reduced fares like Apex fares have impacted the net yield. Seat scarcity, now a round-the-year problem, has also been affecting business. However, ITH could cushion the impact as the company had launched the management fee concept five years back and now 65 per cent of its corporate clients are under the management fee bracket.

Competition, points out that Bhandari, has forced management fees to come down from 5-6 per cent to 2.5-3.5 per cent to compete with Carlson Wagonlit or Thomas Cook, and is contemplating on forging a global alliance. “Global alliance gives us global accounts. We are already in talks with certain prospective companies, though at this point the issue of branding needs to be fine tuned. We don’t want to sacrifice our brand at any cost,” informed Bhandari. Alliance or no alliance, Bhandari is confident of giving other major players a run for their money.