AirPlus International Records Double-Digit Growth in 2002

A profit of 3.5 million euros, partnership success in the UK with British Airways, international expansion plans and a new generation of software for the analysis of business travel costs.

In spite of the difficult economic environment, settlement turnover at  AirPlus International, the leading international provider of business travel management solutions, increased to its highest ever level in 2002.

Last year, 8.2 billion euros were processed via AirPlus accounts. This is equivalent to a rise of 13 per cent compared with 2001. The number of credit cards settled by AirPlus as part of its airline programmes also recorded double-digit growth rising from 708,000 to 782,600. After making its first loss in 2001 as a result of record investment, AirPlus returned to profitability in 2002 with an overall pre-tax profit of 3.5 million euros.

"AirPlus has proved that it can respond quickly and be flexible and that is why it has made a very good profit despite continuing economic weakness and the incalculability of world politics," ex-plains Peter Metzler, a member of the AirPlus board. Expansion into new international markets has been a crucial factor in its positive development. "Whilst turnover in Germany has remained constant, turnover abroad has almost doubled", says Metzler. "In four years, we want to be mak-ing almost half of our turnover abroad."

International expansion plans – UK success

AirPlus International will continue to speed up the process of international expansion this year. According to Patrick W. Diemer, Director of Sales and Customer Care, "The partnership formed with British Airways in October 2002 in the UK has been very successful and will be developed further." As a result of this business partnership, AirPlus gained the a number of highly valuable new customers including; Hitachi Europe, Motorola and L’Oréal UK.

There was similarly positive development in Switzerland where AirPlus helps 1000 corporate customers with their business travel management. Diemer also expects further impetus for growth to come from the USA where AirPlus set up a subsidiary in February 2002. From September 2003, the AirPlus business travel settlement solution will also be available to companies in Hong Kong. This brings the total number of countries in which AirPlus has employees to 15.

Considerable potential for companies to make savings
The management team believes that its most important product innovation, AirPlus Information Manager, has great prospects. This Internet-based management information system supports travel managers with detailed analysis and control of their global business travel expenses. Air-Plus Information Manager enables them to target the most favourable supplier when purchasing quotas (e.g. seats on flights or hotel beds) and to make optimum use of these quotas.

"Business travel costs represent the third highest staff cost after wage costs and non-wage labour costs", explains Patrick W. Diemer. "Increasingly we are finding that companies are looking to their business travel managers to reduce their business travel costs without affecting the quality of the travel services they receive through further optimisation of their internal processes and successful price negotiations with service providers. AirPlus Information Manager is an important tool that enables travel managers to achieve this."