“I’ll govern it the same way I always have – in a very unbiased way. I mean we have to,” said Gary Fee, president of Outside Sales Support Network (OSSN), when asked how the purchase of the association by CCRA, a hotel aggregator, among other things, would impact the way in which OSSN is run.

As reported, CCRA acquired OSSN and the Travel Retailer Universal Enumeration Systems (TRUE) program from Gary and Melody Fee, who will remain in their roles of president and vice president, respectively.

CCRA owns an online booking engine selling 200,000-plus properties, offers call center services to 450 corporate travel agencies, and manages a 34,000-property preferred hotel program for agents. 

Fee (pictured at left) dismissed the notion that CCRA would act as a consortium or a host agency for OSSN. “We certainly welcome all suppliers within our association as we always have in the past and there’s just room for everybody as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “If we start doing more of a biased focus then that’s going to spread a negative connotation within the industry and that’s something we don’t want to get involved in whatsoever.”

Fee said CCRA has been an allied member of OSSN for more than 10 years and that OSSN would take advantage of its resources much in the way that it always has. “They’ve got some great tools that they’re making available to the members.”

 It was the strong connection to CCRA that made Fee believe that the company would be a good fit for OSSN and TRUE. “This is not a new romance,” he said, adding that it’s also not the first time that he had been approached by prospective buyers. “A lot of them we have turned down in the past, but we thought this was a very good fit.”

For his part, Dic Marxen (pictured at left), president and CEO of CCRA, said the acquisition of the OSSN and TRUE was a financial one. “The impact on us will be definitely accretive and we’re very excited from the standpoint of the financial aspects of the acquisition.”

CCRA’s goal, said Marxen, is to provide the Fees with the “the staffing resources that he needs to take OSSN and TRUE to the next level and really expand the products, the brand and obviously the membership.”
Furthermore, OSSN and TRUE will remain two separate companies even though they are now wholly owned CCRA subsidiaries. “They will continue to operate by themselves and on their own,” said Marxen.  “We want them to continue in ‘as is’ condition because they’ve done so well financially.”

OSSN will have access to CCRA products and services in the same way other groups have access, Marxen said. “OSSN has always had access to our products and it’s up to them to take advantage of them.”

Also, CCRA has what Marxen called “significant relationships” with London-based Global Star, comprised of 90 corporate travel agency members in 82 countries representing $17 billion in travel; as well as the Ensemble consortium, which is a partnership going into its third year; and an array of host agencies. “We don’t want to infringe on our other partnerships,” Marxen said. “We’ve got a commitment to provide products and services to all of the parties.”

When asked directly if CCRA would provide special deals to OSSN members, Marxen was adamant: “No,” he said. “There will be no special deals solely for OSSN.”

As for TRUE, which is one of four agent ID programs for agents in the U.S., Fee said plans are underway to expand globally, starting with Latin and South America, where TRUE has identified more than 100,000 independent contractors.  “The idea is to ultimately make the system available to agents in other countries, an ambition that will be facilitated by the additional capital and resources CCRA brings to the table,” Fee said.

In other developments, Marxen said another CCRA business, Air Select Central, will debut in June or July. It will be a centralized ticket portal that enables accredited travel agents without IATAN numbers to book international air fares. “We’ve got some beta customers that will start using it in May,” Marxen said.

Air Select Central is born from Air Select, which was created last year by securing direct contracts with international air carriers. It is used by CCRA’s company that provides call center services to corporate travel agencies. “Today we have between 15 and 20 of those direct contracts that we now offer to our GDS IATAN-based agencies.

In June, Marxen said CCRA will announce and expanded offering for its host agencies. “We’re going to be announcing an expanded offering for our host agencies and really provide a great a partnership opportunity for them whereby they get deeper discounts just because of the volume they offer us,” he said. “ So the ones that can meet those volumes will get access to a new host package.”

In the final analysis, Marxen said stressed that OSSN and TRUE would remain autonomous companies. “I really don’t want to hurt anything that’s not broken,” he said.