CTM-backed corporate travel specialist, 1000 Mile Travel Group is preparing to roll out Tramada in the US as it prepares to make a bigger dent in the corporate SME market of North America. Founders and CEOs of the company, Nicola Veltman and Ben Ross, have also flagged expansion into Europe and other new markets for 1000 MTG as part of their medium-term growth strategy, LATTE can reveal.
As exclusively revealed by LATTE last week, 1000 Mile Travel Group is broadening its reach with Virtuoso beyond the US and Australia, into the United Kingdom. The agreement will launch in a matter of weeks. That partnership will see 1000 MTG’s three regions represented at the annual Virtuoso Travel Week in Las Vegas in August.
Co-CEO Ross said the business is benefitting “massively” from the arrangement with Virtuoso.
“Our experts and our ICs really love it. And it’s those that know it, continue to book it, and those that don’t, we’ll be educating on the advantages and benefits. It really is a massive value-add,” Ross said.
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Eight months since packing up their young family and relocating from Melbourne to Denver in order to tap into the North American market, Ross says the couple is still pinching themselves.
“If you had said to us pre-2019 that we’d be at 750 plus ICs [independent contractors] in 2023, we would have said you’re crazy. There’s just no way.”
“And then all of a sudden, because of the CTM partnership, it’s just absolutely taken off. So we really just want to keep going with that and roll that model out across the UK and Europe.
“We really think we’ve got so much to offer now. It’s a game-changer,” Ross said of the 1000 MTG business model.
Quizzed about future expansion into new markets, Ross said the focus would be to follow CTM’s path and where they already have a footprint established.
Veltman said that going into the new financial year, 1000 Mile Travel Group is in a very strong position with a unique offering.
“We don’t want to bite off more than we can chew,” Veltman added. “For us, it’s about level setting everything that we’ve taken on, getting the base right, rolling out new technology, new hires in the head office, and so on to support all our existing ICs. It’s so exciting.”
In the US, 1000 MTG is in the process of introducing the Tramada technology which was acquired by CTM three years ago.
“That’s been a really big task. We’re really focused on getting that right before we launch corporate SME in July in North America,” Ross confirmed. Once Tramada is bedded down, 1000 MTG will focus on the US business being centred on corporate and continuing that drive into the UK.
Veltman explained that all 1000 Mile Travel Group ICs will be operating under the same trading name. In the corporate space, 1000 Mile Travel Group is the brand for CTM. That strategy means that SME leads that CTM has under a certain value will feed back to 1000 MTG.
“It’s an excellent offering for us when we’ve got corporate ICs that are looking to start their business,” Veltman said.
“Historically, they would need to establish their own pipeline or we would help them with their pipeline, but now we’ve got another arm where we’ve got leads that we can place with them,” the co-CEO said.
Ross said that offering is virtually unheard of in the IC market. “Nobody’s ever done that, that I know of. It’s pretty powerful.”
Back in Australia, 1000 MTG increased their IC network by a third in 2022 joining based on referrals alone, with no recruitment drive necessary.
“Most have hit the ground running,” Veltman said. Total transaction value (TTV), on average, has doubled post-COVID in Australia compared to pre-COVID, alongside gross commission levels, with the average Australian IC turning over $2 million (on average) each.
Veltman will be back in Australia this week on a fleeting visit, meeting with 1000 Mile Travel Group’s team and stakeholders in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.