One year later, what is your assessment of Marietton’s acquisition? Has your view of this merger remained the same or has it evolved?
Maxime Pialat - I am very satisfied. Supertripper follows the same trajectory, Marietton trusts us and allows us to operate our strategy at 100 %%, and supports us in negotiating with suppliers and optimizing, especially the margin. It brings us the strength of a large group, which allows us to position ourselves with larger clients. Supertripper continues to grow. We are still on the same growth path this year, between 30 and 40 %%.
Can the support of such a group facilitate your European expansion? If so, what is the roadmap?
Maxime Pialat - Yes, of course. This is part of our goals with Marietton: to use the technology of Supertripper and our know-how to expand across Europe. We haven’t signed anything yet, but we’re close to achieving that. The goal is to succeed with this first effort, make it a success, and then expand on a large scale across Europe. That’s really our ambition with Marietton. The advantage is that we have the best of both worlds. Supertripper brings the technological punch, and Marietton brings the sourcing of companies and the acquisition of companies. They are very strong in these areas. I think the mix of the two know-hows is quite unbeatable for implementing this strategy.
What is your acquisition strategy?
Maxime Pialat - The idea is to find a company that we would buy to set up in the country. We would implement Supertripper and all our internal system there. Because Supertripper is not just the visible solution to the customer. It is also a whole back-office for travel agents and for billing. It is a completely independent way of operating and very different from a traditional agency. Therefore, we plan to rely on the local expertise of a country. It is about finding a very strong agency in terms of service, with a local presence, and bringing all the technological strength of our solution to it.
L'agreement concluded with Trenitalia Is it an indication of the country in question?
Maxime Pialat - Our strategy isn’t really targeting a particular country. We have a list of countries, and it’s the targeted company that will decide for us. We are opportunistic in four or five markets. We are talking with a lot of companies. Then, we need an agreement, and especially that we feel good about the people because we want them to stay with us to operate the business. It also needs to be the right company to carry out this transformation. It needs to have a minimum level of change culture, be open, have a digital culture. However, we are not looking for companies that have the same culture as us. The idea is to find a company that has a service culture rather than an SBT.
Let’s quickly go back to the connection with Trenitalia. What will this change practically for your customers?
Maxime Pialat - From the beginning, the basis of our strategy at Supertripper has been to make our solution as independent as possible from third-party providers. By that I mean all the intermediaries that could be placed between a provider and the travel agency that is Supertripper. Therefore, when we can, we try to be independent of the GDSs, even if that remains a source we use. We have our own back-office. We don’t need any external software to operate, whether in terms of accounting or as a travel agent. This connection simply follows our strategy. We have already connected Air France directly, as well as to almost all the hotels. Trenitalia is becoming a key provider in France. It was therefore a fairly obvious step, especially since there are also capitalist links [with Certares, [ndlr] which will allow us tomorrow to have specific agreements. It was therefore obvious to develop Trenitalia directly, to offer the best price while being connected without an intermediary.
How is the relationship with the SNCF going in this context?
Maxime Pialat - Very well. I think the competition is healthy. SNCF remains, of course, the main provider. The goal is to work with both. It’s not about relying entirely on Trenitalia when possible and doing without SNCF. The goal is rather to have both in the best possible conditions, then let the customer choose. Today, it is essential for an agency to have Trenitalia. I think that tomorrow, it will also be essential to have other competitors that could potentially arrive in France.
What are the next direct connections to be expected? Do you have any quantified goals in terms of the number of connections?
Maxime Pialat - Not really in figures, but we have a plan. Today, in the hotel industry, we have a very strong competitive advantage over all the existing agencies. We are always cheaper on average in our offer, simply because the hotel industry is the first offering that we built, and we built it in full direct. We work directly with hotel groups and independent hotels. We are connected to the OTAs, so Booking and Expedia, but without an intermediary. The big difference is that most agencies go through consolidators who do the work we do directly. On the same hotel, when we receive the proposal from three, four or five suppliers, we filter the best provider, or at least the best price, so that every time we only bring out the best offer to the customer.
And what about the railway?
Maxime Pialat - We want to move up the quality ladder on the train; we’re already doing so. We already distribute to quite a few suppliers, including Eurostar and Thalys, which has also become Eurostar; but also Trenitalia, SNCF, etc. We’re also going as far as Switzerland. In the medium term, our goal is to allow our customers to travel throughout Europe by train, including domestic travel within the countries. That’s often what’s missing from travel agencies, whether in Spain, Germany or England. That’s our strategy, and it’s going to happen quite quickly.
And finally, the air transport…
Maxime Pialat - In the air sector, we are always working on new connections. This will also depend a lot on the acquisitions we make. Our goal is not to connect all the airlines in the world directly; that wouldn’t make sense, but to connect all the major airlines. Air France was obviously a no-brainer. Then, depending on the country we’re going to, we will potentially connect all the major airlines of that country directly.
We also have connections via aggregators and GDS for everything related to NDC. Our goal is, of course, to switch to NDC everywhere. This is already the case today: we are now using NDC for the vast majority of our content, roughly % 80% of our bookings.
Supertripper has the image of a «geeky» TMC, at the forefront of new technologies. Yet you remain discreet regarding AI compared to other players. What is your approach to this issue?
Maxime Pialat - An enormous number of actors today use AI as a marketing tool. This is AI washing. AI is practically the new CSR. Of course, we are implementing AI; we are at 200 % % implementation. First and foremost internally, to allow our agents to work much faster. For example, a customer is stuck in an airport: the AI will first perform a diagnosis, then propose all the possible alternatives. But the decision remains with the agent. We certainly don’t want to get too caught up in automating everything. The travel agent brings enormous value-added and he still has many advantages that AI does not have. Our vision is really an enhanced agent. Furthermore, when you have a very important customer base like ours, AI also allows the agent to always have information about each customer’s preferences.
And for the customers, of course?
Maxime Pialat - On the client side, our reporting, accessible directly from the platform, includes a tab in which AI analyzes the scoring of the travel strategy in real time. For example, we’ll tell you: «You have a score of 80 % on your travel strategy.» Then we detail all the items that make up the travel strategy and are levers for improvement, whether in terms of costs or quality. Is your forecast of bookings good? By how much could you reduce your costs if all your travelers anticipated ten days more on average? Are you managing your subscription cards properly? At a glance, the travel manager and team leaders see what they need to improve to reduce costs and be more efficient. We are also working on the entire after-sales part, to automate it in a conversational mode. I think the real asset lies there. That’s the frustrating part for a user: logging in to modify or cancel a ticket. We already have a POC, and that will happen quite quickly on our platform, I think. Our strategy will always be a mix between the human, the service, and the digital. I’m not at all in favor of saying that tomorrow we’ll automate everything and no longer have agents or service. On the contrary, I consider that service will take on a lot of value with AI.
Isn’t there the temptation, like many others, to connect directly to ChatGPT or Claude?
Maxime Pialat - Should I book directly on ChatGPT or Claude? No, that’s not our strategy. We already use Claude APIs, of course, for certain features or for internal purposes. However, our strategy is not to leave Supertripper to go sell on these types of platforms.
Some of your competitors are directly targeting the MICE market. Is this a temptation for Supertripper?
Maxime Pialat - We have a MICE service. Obviously, this is not our main offering. We remain specialists in business travel, but we have internally set up a service that handles all MICE. Today, almost all of our clients also entrust us with their MICE.
Isn’t there a possible takeover of an actor already specialized in this profession in the pipeline to advance more quickly?
Maxime Pialat - No. We considered it at one point, but we ultimately decided to build it in-house. We recruited MICE specialists, who set up this service for us. Buying out an existing player is not our strategy at this stage.
Finally, how do you see the months ahead and the year as a whole? You mentioned growth of between 30 and 40 %…
Maxime Pialat - The year seemed complicated for the market as a whole. Yet, I think we will end it with growth of around 30 %%. We are therefore quite happy with our year. We are also seeing more and more large accounts coming in. We remain focused on the mid-market, but our strategy was also to expand into large accounts. We managed to do that this year. It has therefore been a very good year, and I think 2027 will be in the same vein. We will try to maintain this rate of growth, or even improve it, and sign more and more accounts, and larger ones.
