Another major Power List tie-up is in the books now that Direct Travel, a North American TMC, has acquired U.K.-based ATPI.
Their combination forms a company that will produce more than $6 billion in annual sales, according to Direct Travel. And it could cause another shake-up near the top of Travel Weekly's Power List, just weeks after American Express Global Business Travel completed its purchase of CWT.
The ATPI deal was a natural fit, said Direct Travel CEO Christal Bemont: It marries two companies that have already worked together for nearly a decade.
"Everything that we are, they aren't, and everything they are, we aren't," Bemont said. "It's like we were two pieces of a whole."
Both the markets they cover and their specialties are complementary, she said. While Direct Travel is heavily in the corporate travel management space, ATPI's specialties lie in segments like mining, energy and sports. While Direct Travel focuses heavily on North America, ATPI's strength is in markets outside of North America.
And the two agencies have been working together under a formal partnership dubbed Direct ATPI for the past eight or nine years, she said. They have more than 100 customers in common.
Talk of an acquisition isn't new, Bemont said. It's come up over the years but was stalled by the pandemic and the recovery.
Christal Bemont
Bemont joined Direct Travel in April 2024 when it was acquired by a group of investors led by Steve Singh, a venture capitalist and the founder of Concur. About four months into the job, the merits of an acquisition became clear to her.
Bemont said the acquisition will mark "the most stable, nonevent for customers of any acquisition that's gone on in the history of time."
The two companies already worked together, and the transaction will make that even easier. It is not an acquisition focused on consolidation, Bemont said.
"I think just two companies coming together, we'll probably naturally find areas where both of us were working, and we can come together and work together as one team. That'll be a natural thing," she said. "But this is like two different family members moving in together."
Power List movers
A primary focus for Bemont has been technology. Direct Travel now works with technology company Spotnana, which powers its Avenir Travel Edition platform, and the pipeline of customers interested in using Avenir is bigger than ever.
Bemont said having less of a global footprint was holding back the broader rollout of Avenir, a problem ATPI will help solve.
Bemont said Direct Travel was also looking to agentic opportunities to help its customers better solve problems. Travel managers and procurement heads often bemoan the amount of time they spend answering inquiries related to policies, she said, draining their bandwidth. Direct Travel has been developing solutions that might solve that issue.
With the acquisition, the combined company could move up on Travel Weekly's Power List. At No. 13, Direct Travel's 2024 sales were $4.4 billion; ATPI, at No. 18, recorded $1.9 billion in sales.
By comparison, No. 9 Navan had an estimated $6.1 billion in 2024 sales, No. 10 Internova reported $6 billion, and CTM, No. 11, reported $5.82 billion.
Bemont said what is most important to her is "that we are the most innovative, that we are at the top of the list of customer experience and strategic business partners and innovation."
"From my standpoint, what I judge our significance on is definitely more on how we're viewed by our collective customers," she added.