Alshamel Travel, one of the region’s leading travel management companies, has announced that Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) and Alshamel have agreed to cease their eight year working relationship. The decision was made effective as of 1 July 2014.

Yousef Al-Essa, Chairman of Alshamel Travel said: “Over the last eight years, the joint CWT-Alshamel Travel service offering has been a great success for both companies. Today, in a rapidly changing market, each company is rolling out a different strategy to better meet their respective needs. In the light of these changed circumstances, Alshamel Travel and CWT ceased their partnership earlier this month.”

“Moving forward, as part of our strategy we will take a more direct business approach to our clients, as well as continuing to develop our strong partnerships with suppliers. It is prudent in the long term to focus on building our own portfolio of clients as well as on higher margin business. Our aim is to build strong one-to-one relationships with clients, as this will help us to better understand their needs and ensure that we can provide them with the very best services. Building a diversified wholly owned client portfolio is at the heart of our strategy and we intend only to partner with international firms if it makes commercial sense and meets our criteria.”

“We are committed to developing Alshamel Travel and we will continue to focus on our three core business units: Corporate Travel, Leisure Travel, Military & Government Travel. In addition, we will also have Luxury Travel through our subsidiary LUXURIA by Alshamel Travel, in-bound and out-bound services by sister company Net Tours, meetings and events through Net Events. As one of the leading travel management companies in the region, we continue to add new accounts at international and local levels and we plan to continue our development in these areas.”

“In our pursuit of expansion in the retail market, we are strengthening our leisure offering by presenting customers with a variety of leisure packages while offering our customers the convenience to interact with our travel consultants directly by expanding our retail shops network in the region, a contact center as well as launching our new corporate website.
“I want to thank CWT for all their efforts over the last eight years and I also want to thank our CWT clients for their business and the relationships we have built. I would like to wish CWT all success in their future endeavors.”

The company’s travel services include: booking flights, hotels and cars, arranging client’s in-bound and out-bound meet and assist, meetings, incentives, conferences and events (MICE), visa services, VIP desk, private corporate charters, 24/7 emergency travel services, and special services configurations for the energy sector to make travel easier for corporate clients.