AMERICAN Express Travel Services is to close three of its 14 UK regional business centres and may shut down more in the near future.
Head of corporate travel operations Iain Robinson said the centres, in Gloucester, Cambridge and Basingstoke, will shut down in March and business will be transferred to Amex’s biggest corporate centres, in Milton Keynes, Manchester and Birmingham.
The move is part of an on-going £10m development strategy to consolidate Amex’s UKbusiness into its key strategic centres.
Sixty members of staff, currently employed at Gloucester, Cambridge and Basingstoke, were told of the decision last week. Robinson said he hoped staff would be redeployed although they will not necessarily get jobs in business travel.
He said: “Amex has a large number of centres carrying out tasks other than corporate travel. We are talking right now to staff about their redeployment opportunities.”
Much of the money is spent on developing technology to transparently pass calls from one centre to another. As a result of this, account-specific members of staff will no longer be needed.
Robinson said the technology would allow Amex to develop ‘virtual centres’, leading to the possibility of further consolidation among Amex’s remaining geographical locations.
One rival business travel agent claimed Amex was taking a gamble.
He said: “You take a risk in reducing your costs by moving to bigger offices – you may upset the customer who no longer gets local service.
“Although technology says there is no reason why the customer should not get the same level of service, they then start looking around for a local agent.”