Egencia celebrated its 10th birthday today in part by announcing a few previously unreleased tidbits about the Expedia-owned corporate travel company, including claims that more than 2,200 employees globally serve more than 4 million travelers at 10,000 client companies.
I was going to skip covering Egencia's birthday wishes except that we somehow missed the Expedia/Egencia quarterly numbers that came out two weeks ago. So here they are to get us on the record: For the quarter ended in September, Egencia's revenue grew 76 percent year over year to $78 million. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization grew 143 percent to $12 million.
Now, Egencia may be growing fast and getting big, but it doesn't do everything! I can't resist pointing out this bold suggestion from the birthday company: "Prior to Egencia, business travel was largely booked by calling an agent on the phone and using paper tickets."
Egencia and its Expedia parent have been as important as anybody in the creation of self-service online travel__though not nearly the first to offer corporate travelers a way to avoid phone calls to agents__but taking credit for e-ticketing? Quite a stretch.
"It was not a statement about electronic ticketing," according to an Egencia press official. "For further clarification, this was intended to be a statement about applying the same kind of online consumerization tools that come with Expedia to business travel."