The world of travel agents and freight forwarders is fast-changing. And so is IATA. To provide the service that the customers of our financial settlement systems expect, we are creating a Global Delivery Center. This combines and consolidates our back-office resources into one seamless team spread across four offices—Beijing, Madrid, Montreal and Singapore. Together they will provide 24/7 customer service coverage.
Some things will not change. Our members, customers and stakeholders can still rely on the support of our field offices and our five regional offices—Miami for The Americas, Singapore for Asia Pacific, Beijing for North Asia, Amman for the Middle East and Africa and Madrid for Europe (including Russia, CIS, Ukraine, Turkey and Israel). Each of these regional offices has the expertise to help across a broad range of subject areas—including safety, security, advocacy, airports, cargo, flight operations, and environment.
To take advantage of Europe's unique time-zone location when doing business around the world, Madrid will play a critical role within the GDC. By the end of the year, over 300 staff members will be based in Madrid. That's double the workforce at the beginning of 2017. With over 60 nationalities represented, the diversity of the team will add value to customer relationships.
The responsibilities of the Madrid part of the GDC are significant. On an annual basis, we expect the GDC team in the Madrid office alone to manage $150 billion in settlements, handle some 300 million plane tickets and help a combined total of 50,000 travel agents and freight forwarders. Considering that the entire airline industry's revenue is about $800 million you can easily understand why we are investing in top level cross-cultural talent for this important operation.
As Rafael Schvartzman, IATA's Region Vice President for Europe who heads the Madrid office, puts it: "Madrid is a great home for IATA. And expanding our team as one of the four locations of the GDC is creating attractive career opportunities for many talented people. Together with the rest of the IATA global team we remain dedicated to supporting the competitiveness and sustainability of the worldwide air transport system with global standards and top class customer service".
Rafael Schvartzman at a press conference
