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FCM Travel
CUSTOMER-CENTRICITY AND CULTURE THE KEY TO SUCCESS OF FCM TRAVEL
Insight | HLB HAMT
Ciarán Kelly, Managing Director, UAE, and Middle East & Africa Regional Leader at FCM Travel, outlines how its customer-centric approach and strong culture has been a real differentiator for the company in terms of overcoming the challenges they faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kelly has enjoyed a decorated and distinguished career at FCM Travel and has spent 19 years at the travel management company. In a candid interview for the latest edition of the HLB HAMT Insight supplement, Kelly explains in detail how their continued investment in emerging technologies in recent years helped them streamline operational efficiency, their strategic plans for 2021 - and how their personalised business model ultimately helped them survive the economic crisis of the pandemic.
FCM Travel is a travel management company that has a market presence in 95 countries worldwide. However, the COVID-19 pandemic practically shutdown the aviation industry, and almost all corporate travel was suspended. How did you survive these unprecedented challenges? Several reasons have contributed to FCM surviving the pandemic challenges thus far. We prepared in advance as much as possible before city lockdowns happened. Our contingency plan of working from home was set up 3
weeks in advance for example before the UAE shut down. This allowed us to equip staff with systems to continue servicing customers in the event that our office building was potentially shut down overnight if COVID-19 broke out in our office or elsewhere in the office/ hotel building. Communication with staff was regular via various forums, daily alerts, weekly zoom calls, small department team communication messages to ensure staff knew what was expected from them internally
