This is the second time in three years he has received this prestigious honor. We couldn’t be more proud of our leadership!
In 2011, Direct Travel CEO Ed Adams, backed by private equity dollars, embarked on a plan to roll up midmarket agencies into a $1.5 billion travel management company. The longtime agency vet last year closed in on that target by acquiring six U.S.-based corporate agencies: Best Travel & Tours, Caldwell Travel, Child Albany Travel of New York and Vermont, Hurley Travel, Peak Travel Group and Travel Destinations Management. Those followed three other acquisitions made since initiating the rollup plan, comprising Corporate Travel Services in Minneapolis, Travel Management Corp. and what had been Directravel.
While Direct Travel now handles “just under” $1 billion in net air sales and $1.5 billion in total sales, according to a spokesperson, Adams isn’t finished. Last month during The BTN Group’s Business Travel Trends & Forecasts conference in New York, Adams said he expected “continued consolidation of TMCs,” with Direct Travel planning “to add another four to six TMCs” in 2015.
If that sounds familiar, it is. Adams built up Navigant International in a similar fashion before selling in 2006 to Carlson Wagonlit Travel.
Asked last year by The Beat about the lessons learned from his tenure at Navigant, Adams said, “The importance of keeping the key employees and stakeholders within the midmarket customer engaged and trying to coordinate and consolidate methodologies, from front office, mid-office and back office.”
Concerning goals, Adams told The Beat, “I’d love to get to $18 million to $20 million EBITDA. At that number, it opens all kinds of new possibilities in terms of a bigger private equity firm opportunity maybe to move outside North America and other possibilities on the table.”
—Jay Boehmer