Groupe Encore I.T.S. was founded in 1976.  In 1987, Monique Mardinian became the owner and to this day, still is.

The only service we provide is one of Corporate Travel Management.

Our Vision, Our Passion
At Encore, our people love what they do; they get results and they want to be the best.  In 1986, working part time in a travel agency while completing a degree in Actuarial Science, I was astounded by the blatant conflict of interest that agencies and corporations faced.  Agents were being compensated by airlines and hotels and the corporations were going to these agents for advice on how to save money and select the best routes for a trip.  My vision was clear: build a travel company whose sole purpose is to bring expertise to corporations to help make travel easier for their employees while spending their money as if it was our own!  On January 17, 1987, I purchased a small travel agency, and then with 1 employee and the most rudimentary technology set out to help companies make the most of their travel budgets.  Challenges became opportunities and the vision and passion turned into results.  Our first major client became a believer in 1988 and we are very proud that this partnership with Ericsson continues to this day.

Pay for Performance
It was with this client that we founded our business model that confirmed our commitment to cost savings and happy travelers.  Ahead of the industry and way before the abolishment of commissions, our compensation was provided by our clients and not our suppliers. We put into place a variable compensation model that was oriented to achieving predetermined cost savings and customer satisfaction objectives. Pay for performance did two things: (1) It eliminated the doubt that corporate employees had in the travel provider. “I found a better fare than the agent” disappeared since they knew that we only made a profit if we saved them money, and (2) it created a partnership with the budget owners as every penny we saved them went into their own bottom line.

Helpful, Resourceful, Persuasive
In addition to the innovative and clearly client aligned financial model, we focused on consolidating all the travel spend as this was the only way to leverage the volume.  It was clear that this was and still is a challenge for most corporations and that the only way to achieve it was to provide a service that really took care of the needs of each of the 3 different consumers of corporate travel: the person making the bookings, each traveller and the travel budget owner.  The traits of our agents are key to achieving account consolidation – helpfulness with a mission of service, resourcefulness with a tenacious desire to always find a way to make it happen and persuasiveness to be able to clear a seat on an oversold flight or convince a traveller to take a lower fare on an alternative airline to save the company hundreds of dollars.  Our investment in our staff starts at the hiring stage and then continues with ongoing coaching and support.

The Right Information – Change Behaviour
And finally the Groupe Encore Client Solutions Managers (account managers) are focused on providing you best practices in 3 main areas: the first is the entire travel procurement process. The second is traveler behaviour and the third is business travel intelligence. Armed with business reviews that recap these 3 areas, the Client Solutions Managers bring our clients information on additional opportunities to save money and improve traveler experience along with action plans to get the results desired.