Travelweek reached out to Bemont after the announcement that Direct Travel will be acquired by a team of investors led by venture capitalist (and founder of the world’s largest travel and expense management company, Concur), Steve Singh.

As Bemont told Travelweek, when asked about the impact on Direct Travel’s Canadian travel advisors: “We have very strong ambitions to emerge as leaders in the market. As we invest to grow our business and flourish, we expect employees to benefit from even greater opportunities for career development and advancement as part of a stronger, rapidly growing organization.”

Bemont was formerly CEO of Talend, and before that she served as the CRO of SAP Concur. She has extensive travel industry experience, having spent over 15 years at SAP Concur.

At Direct Travel, Bemont takes over from long-serving CEO Ed Adams, who founded the company in 2011 and helped establish it as a market leader, and who now plans to retire.

Travelweek asked Bemont what’s exciting about the acquisition.

“Our goal is simple – deliver a dramatically better value proposition to business travellers, the companies they work for, and the travel providers that serve them,” she told Travelweek.

“Our vision is to build the most admired and innovative travel management company in the world. We will execute on that vision by investing to meet our customers’ current needs, grow our customer base in each of the markets we serve, methodically expand the number of markets we serve, and the breadth of products we deliver to our clients – this will be in part through our own innovations and in part through our partnerships with Spotnana, Center, and Troop,” she added.

Singh, who will serve as Executive Chairman of Direct Travel, says Spotnana, Center and Troop “are re-inventing and dramatically improving core elements of the travel technology stack.” Spotnana is a Travel-as-a-Service platform, Center is a card-first expense management platform and Troop is a group meetings and events platform.

Direct Travel is one of the world’s largest travel management companies, serving over 4,500 mid-market and enterprise clients. The company “sets the bar for customer experience,” said Singh in a statement. Singh’s vision for ‘The Perfect Trip’ is a guiding principle for the company going forward.

Direct Travel has thousands of clients across North America and the EU, ranging in size from middle market businesses to some of the largest companies in the world.

Brian Robertson

Bemont tells Travelweek that Canada “represents a significant part of our business with over one-third of our business derived from serving our customers in the region.”

Travelweek also reached out to Brian Robertson, President, Canada West at Direct Travel, for his take on the acquisition.

“This is indeed very exciting news for us at DT! It is very positive for our front-line advisors as it will bring new customer focused innovations, technology and resources to deliver ‘Whatever it Takes’ to our valued clients,” Robertson told Travelweek.