Travel Management Centers (TMCs) are travel agencies approved and contracted by GSA to provide transportation reservations and ticketing services to government travelers for official TDY travel.
The TMCs must be accredited by the airline reporting corporation (ARC). The airline reporting corporation provides four primary services for the travel industry.
An accreditation program for designating competent, responsible travel agents in the us for the sale of worldwide air transportation. Uniform, standard tickets and other traffic documents necessary for the issuance of tickets and other ancillary services (tour packages, surface transportation, hotel accommodations, other ground arangements, etc). A computerized system through which arc-accreditied entities report sales and remit the proceeds thereof to a repository of transactional information and data.
Travel agents that are responsible for government travel accounts have travel agency and GDS experience and receive special training on policies and procedures for official TDY travel. The TMC has air travel, hotel accomodation, rental car and destination experience which can greatly facilitate trip planning and ticketing process. Travel agents have a variety of training opportunities on the different GDS, professional development through professional and educational organizations. Agents also have the opportunity to travel to destinations on “familiarization trips.” These trips provide agents with an in depth understanding of special attributes of certain localities.
Some advantages of using the tmc are reporting capabilities, emergency tracking of travelers, ensures government rates, they meet the ftr requirements, and make ticket exchanging easy while on travel. They also assist with travel options including combining personal with official travel.
By Deva Wilson