Wings Travel Management has triumphed at the 2021 Business Travel Awards Europe, winning the accolade for ‘Travel Partner of the Year – Best Global TMC’. This is the third year running that Wings has won at this prestigious awards ceremony, having been named Best Travel Management Company in 2020 and 2019.
For over 25-years, The Business Travel Awards have been regarded as the highest accolades in the business travel sector, honouring the best suppliers in each category. The 2021 Business Travel Europe Awards, organised by the BTN Group, recognise and celebrate the industry’s response to what has been an extremely challenging year. In particular the awards for 2021 place emphasis on how companies have best demonstrated leadership, partnership and innovation throughout the last 12 months.
Winning the Best Global TMC category is an outstanding achievement as these awards are highly competitive and involve a detailed written submission and entry process. The judging process, conducted by a panel of 27 business travel managers and consultants, is rigorous and totally impartial.
After completing stage one of the written submission, each finalist was then required to prepare a comprehensive case study demonstrating successful collaboration with a corporate client or partner to target certain goals.
Wings’ submission emphasised the company’s focus on enabling clients in the energy, marine and security sectors to continue travelling for essential purposes despite unprecedentedly challenging travel logistics.
For example, Wings’ operations team in the Middle East radically adapted normal processes, responded to ever-changing travel restrictions, found creative ways to mobilise crew and provided hands-on service. At the start of the pandemic, commercial airlines cancelled flight schedules and borders began closing. Yet crew rotations had to continue and thousands needed to be mobilised, either coming off rigs to fly home, or waiting to transfer from home country to rigs in region. Between June and October 2020, the Wings team chartered flights to mobilise hundreds of crew, particularly in and out of Saudi Arabia.
The awards submission also highlighted other initiatives that Wings undertook to support corporate clients – especially in the finance and legal sectors – with domestic and regional travel despite intercontinental lockdowns and continuing travel restrictions. For example, the TMC equipped all travel consultants to work remotely in order that they could continue to offer high touch levels of support these clients throughout the last 18 months.
Wings also contracted thousands of hotel room nights in the UK and Europe to enable clients’ travellers to quarantine pre or post trip; the TMC also booked hundreds of hotel meeting rooms to facilitate Covid-testing.
Despite the severe impact of pandemic, Wings also successfully secured significant new business globally. The TMC also continued to ensure future growth and success by strategically investing in its global footprint, technology offering, client implementation and staff welfare.
Tony Sofianos, CEO, Wings Travel Management said: “It is an honour to win this award. The entry process was very demanding and Wings was up against strong competition from other high-profile global TMCs. This award is testament to the dedication of our people and the extraordinary lengths they went to in order to support our clients with incredibly complex essential travel during the chaos of Covid”.
“Because we own and manage all our global operations, we can provide consistent and critical traveller safety support. Our commitment and expertise in giving energy, security and marine clients this support lies at the core of our operations due to their complex and often hazardous travel needs. Covid-19 moved traveller safety and duty of care to the top of every corporate’s agenda and our expertise and proprietary infrastructure will be hugely beneficial to clients in other sectors as they return to travel,” added Sofianos.