ebookers turns into offshore service provider

Dot-com travel agent ebookers is planning to turn its offshore facilities in India into a revenue-generating third-party service provider that will sell customer service and back-office services to other companies.

The company, which bucked the travel industry downturn with strong results last week, has revealed it has already been approached by other "top-tier international" firms who want to use its Tecnovate business process outsourcing (BPO) facilities in India.

Tecnovate has already achieved cost savings of £1.4m and the group is predicting that could rise to over £2m per quarter by the end of the year.

ebookers already handles its customer service, email ticketing and sales and various back-office functions through Indian BPO and has taken on additional space and capacity in New Delhi to expand Tecnovate ahead of taking on processing for other non-competing companies.

Dinesh Dhamija, CEO of ebookers, said in a statement: "This additional capacity will be used to service third party clients. We have already demonstrated our expertise in creating a successful BPO and will now turn it from a cost centre into a profit centre."

Phil Codling, analyst at Ovum Holway, said that with the glut of offshore service providers the winners will be those that deliver not just cost savings but improvements in quality.

He said: "This is exactly the opposite of what BA did with its once-captive Indian operation, which now looks to be flourishing independently as WNS. But there’s no reason why ebookers shouldn’t be successful as an offshore service provider."