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The Travel Trust Association has no plans to cut costs across the headquarters teams of the TTA and agency consortium Worldchoice following its buyout of Worldchoice shareholders.

The deal, announced today, will produce a group of more than 800 independent travel agencies with head offices in Working and Peterborough.

The Worldchoice board accepted the TTA offer following two months of negotiations, rejecting a deal to join Global Travel Group and its parent Stella Travel Services that had been two years in the making. The decision still requires 75% support among Worldchoice shareholders at a meeting expected by the end of the month.

TTA founder and director Todd Carpenter said: "It is a straightforward deal. We do not need to go cost-cutting. Rationalisation was not a prerequisite. We are going to take our time and look at things."

The deal involves the purchase of the Worldchoice business that runs nine agencies bought from retiring consortium members, together with a merger of the wider network of independent agencies

The Worldchoice office in Peterborough and TTA office in Woking each employ 20-25 staff. Carpenter said: "Synergies will come from what we do that Worldchoice does not and what Worldchoice does that we do not."

He said Worldchoice's continuing membership of the Triton Travel Group and the sale of Stella products would pose no problem. "We sell Stella products and we are going to sell Stella products," said Carpenter. But he added: "The Worldchoice guys still have to decide whether to give us the keys."

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