Key Travel

Key Travel
One of TTG’s Top 50 Travel Agencies 2020

Key Travel celebrates its 40th birthday this year, and is also marking a pivotal period in the company’s history, having acquired another humanitarian sector specialist 18 months ago and significantly grown its international footprint.

The team now numbers 650 globally, and the two company cultures are fusing nicely together supported by Key’s core values – compassion, simplicity and impact.

Key works exclusively with clients in the humanitarian, education and faith sectors, which requires an extraordinarily high level of expertise from its consultants; a third of the flights booked for non-governmental organisation (NGO) clients comprise seven or more individual flights.

Key Travel has been working closely with distribution platform, Amadeus, to drive development, and has added a raft of enhancements to its own platform in the past year, including better carbon reporting tools and groups functionality. This has seen the proportion of clients utilising its self-booking tool increase to 70%.

In just one example of a successful new client implementation in 2019, 70% of staff at a London university were using Key’s travel booking platform within three months of launch, while only 5% had been successfully coaxed into using the previous provider’s.

Staff retention is high, with many of the original Key team having been with the company 15 to 20 years, and frequently joining the travel management company from the humanitarian sector, having seen first-hand the difference well-managed travel can make to a charity’s finances.

The company also has a strong culture of giving back, and has been working closely with a small African NGO called Village by Village. Last year, Key raised more than £18,000 for a school-building project in Ghana, with 10 of the team flying out to take school provisions and learn more about the project.

Turnover for Key Travel grew by 26% in the past year, mainly thanks to new client wins, but the agency focuses instead on how much money it has saved for clients doing such critical work around the world. It says: “We saved £80 million for our clients in 2019 – and that might translate into 300,000 meals for people in need.”

keytravel.com/uk