Adelman Travel Group, a travel management firm based in Minneapolis, Minn., reports it will acquire Great Southern Travel, the travel agency division of Great Southern Financial Corporation. The deal is the largest acquisition in Adelman’s history and caps a series of business moves that the company says will increase it's revenue by a projected 25 percent this year. Adelman offers on-site locations among it services. Terms of the agreement were not released.
“We are a very different company than we were two years ago,” said Steve Cline, chief operating officer of Adelman Travel Group. “We have always been a strong player in the business and corporate travel sector, but we knew we had to round out our line of services. Bringing in Great Southern Travel opens up a new market for us within corporate travel and greatly expands our vacation travel business.”
Great Southern Travel, based in Springfield, Missouri, was founded in 1977 as a division of Great Southern Financial Corporation. It is one of the top 100 travel agencies in the United States, with about 90 employees in 13 locations, Adelman said. The Great Southern Travel locations will be rebranded, but Cline said they will operate much the same as they did before.
Adelman also said it has finalized a marketing and co-branding agreement with Summit Performance Group (SPG), a meetings and incentives company based in San Diego, CA. According to Cline, more and more of Adelman’s corporate customers interested in meetings and incentives travel are asking Adelman to respond to bid requests or requests for proposals, so it made sense to integrate a corporate/meetings product into Adelman’s offerings.
Earlier this year, Adelman opened a second state-of-the-art call center at their corporate headquarters to accommodate reward travel redemption, a new line of business for the company. This unit fulfills air, car, hotel and travelers insurance in exchange for reward points.
Adelman also reports it recently begun offering a managed video conferencing solution trademarked VideoTravel as an alternative to traditional travel. “Our objective is to take advantage of the synergies within these different segments of travel and managed video conferencing, to reshape the company’s strategic position."
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