Carl Buerckner Left HRG to Build a Family Travel Firm

Carl Buerckner left HRG Australia in 2009, then founded Platinum Travel Group the same year with his children Andy Buerckner and Sarah Szubanski. In Hobart in 2024 the family firm marked 15 years and honoured him for 50 years in travel, with Andy as chief executive and Sarah as managing director.

Kevin Ruffles, then HRG’s president for Asia Pacific, thanked him as he walked out of a global travel management company. The shop they opened next is still privately held, and the operating seats belong to the children.

Carl Buerckner Left HRG Australia in 2009

Hogg Robinson put Greg Treasure, then its Hong Kong general manager, into the Australia managing director’s chair in February 2009 and based him in Melbourne. The company said Carl had chosen to leave HRG Australia to pursue early retirement plans.

Carl has been instrumental in the formation of HRG Australia and its evolution to the point where it became part of Hogg Robinson plc in 1998, and under his leadership has positioned HRG as one of the leaders in corporate travel services companies in Australia.

Kevin Ruffles, then HRG president for Asia Pacific, February 2009

Retirement, in the event, lasted as long as it took to open another agency. Platinum’s own history puts the founding in 2009, with Carl now listed as executive chairman. Andy’s working record dates his chief executive role to that first year as well.

He had already built and sold a corporate book once. In 1993 he founded BTI Australia. Ruffles later described that business as the core of HRG Australia once it sat inside Hogg Robinson plc. The 2009 move reversed the old path: instead of folding a local firm into a global group, he started a local firm after leaving one.

Fifty Years From a Bank Travel Desk

The Hobart honour treated those five decades as one career. The jobs underneath it were not one job. He started in bank travel, ran a corporate specialist, sat inside a British group, chaired the agents’ federation, then backed a family shop that his children operate.

CARL BUERCKNER’S TRAVEL CLOCK

1. 1970s: Starts at NAB Travel, the travel arm of National Australia Bank, the first desk named in the tribute.
2. 1993: Founds BTI Australia, a corporate travel business he later steered into the Hogg Robinson stable.
3. 1998: HRG Australia sits inside Hogg Robinson plc, with Carl as the local managing director Ruffles later credited for that shift.
4. 2009: Leaves HRG Australia in February and, the same year, founds Platinum Travel Group with Andy and Sarah.
5. 2018: Platinum’s Victorian office is still inside Magellan when Helloworld Travel buys the group for $32.5 million.
6. 2023: AFTA, which he once chaired, is succeeded on 15 August by the Australian Travel Industry Association.
7. 2024: The family marks 15 years in Hobart and honours his 50 years in the trade.
8. 2025: A new operating bench is named in February, then an AI pact in May aims at tenfold revenue by 2030 with no extra headcount.

AFTA itself dated to 1957 as the agents’ federation. The body that now speaks for that membership is the peak body for Australian travel businesses, renamed after a two-year review of who actually holds the membership cards.

The Family Firm Was Built for SME Accounts

Platinum’s about page does not tell a founder-does-everything story. It says Andy and Sarah, inspired by their father, set out to serve the SME corporate travel sector by taking lessons from the large travel management companies and selling a more personal version of the same work.

The offer is corporate travel, events, energy and resource movements, and leisure. The group still describes itself as Australian owned and privately held. Its LinkedIn page puts staff in the 51 to 200 band and lists a national footprint across three time zones.

PLATINUM’S GROWTH MARKS

• 2016/17 lift: Directors said trading rose 33% that year, before the Canterbury move.
• 2018 trading: Business was up almost 37% year on year when the new Victorian head office opened.
• Canterbury floor: The office was built for up to 60 staff as the family tried to house that growth in one place.
• Early 2024: Andy said total transaction value and team size were up 30% from the start of that year, as national hires landed.

That is still a mid-market book. The Global Business Travel Association’s 2024 index Australia ranked 11th for business travel, with spend of $26.7 billion USD (about $42.5 billion AUD). Platinum is not chasing the whole pile. It is chasing the slice the global brands under-serve, which is why the 2009 brief still reads the same on the company site.

Magellan Shares and the Helloworld Buyout

Independence here never meant isolation. Magellan Travel’s pitch to members is that they keep control of their own agencies while pooling suppliers, and Helloworld still presents that Magellan independent agent network as a separate brand inside its retail stack.

Helloworld Travel closed its Magellan purchase in 2018 for $32.5 million, a mix of cash and shares. Andrew Burnes, then Helloworld’s chief executive, welcomed the Magellan members into the listed group and kept the Magellan format on the shopfront. Platinum’s Victorian business was treated as an integral Magellan member at the Canterbury opening that June, with Burnes and Magellan general manager Andrew Macfarlane in the room.

Company records from the share allotment tied Bellazahn Pty Ltd, a vehicle associated with Carl and Cathryn Buerckner, to Magellan-side consideration in that deal. He was not only a member using the group’s contracts. He was on the side of the table that took Helloworld paper.

A similarly named Platinum operation in New South Wales and Queensland, run separately by Greg McCarthy, left Magellan in that period through a sale to Corporate Travel Management, which named McCarthy as its Australia and New Zealand chief executive. The Buerckner firm in Victoria is a different company. Readers who flatten both into one brand miss the point of the 2009 wager, which was ownership of this shop, not a ban on networks.

Who Runs Platinum Travel Group Now?

The tribute in Hobart was for the father. The nameplate on the operating roles is not his. Platinum’s directors page lists three seats, and only one of them is the founder’s.

THE FAMILY SEATS

Sarah told the Hobart room that when the family talks about their father, the words that come up are trustworthy, determined and reliable. “He is a true champion of the travel industry and has left an undeniable mark on all who have had the privilege to work with him,” she said. She also said his work on relationships in Australia and abroad had given Platinum a base to keep growing.

Andy said Carl’s mentoring had shaped his own career and the way the firm treats staff. “His values of trust, accountability and care remain the pillars of our business, and we are incredibly proud to carry his legacy forward,” he said. Cathy Buerckner, Carl’s wife, stood in the official photograph with the two children who hold the executive titles.

That split is the 2009 design made visible. The founder’s name still opens doors. The children run payroll, clients and the next product decision.

Tenfold Revenue by 2030, Same Headcount

In February 2025 Platinum named a wider bench under Andy and Sarah, months after the anniversary. Phil Gleeson joined as general manager for strategy and partnerships from a chief transformation role at Connections Group. Ryan Potts moved to chief operations officer. Lauren O’Dowd became general manager for customer experience, and Lauren Lotter took Western Australia.

THE 2025 OPERATING BENCH

• Ryan Potts: As chief operations officer he framed the AI pact as a way for a mid-size TMC to grow without copying the headcount of a global group.
• Phil Gleeson: Hired from Connections Group to lock in supplier and partner deals that a family firm cannot fund by acquisition.
• Lauren O’Dowd: Put on customer experience as the company tries to keep a human desk while software takes the repetitive file work.
• Lauren Lotter: Holds Western Australia as the group pushes a national footprint from its Victorian base.

On 22 May 2025 Platinum said it would onboard Acai Travel, whose AI agents built for TMCs are sold as contact-centre software for corporate books. The brief was blunt: scale smarter and grow revenue tenfold by 2030 without increasing headcount. Acai’s figures, carried in that announcement, put repetitive advisor work down by up to 70% and reply times up by 50%.

Potts said, “We’re building the TMC of 2030 today.” He added that Acai was the right partner because it does not only automate tasks, it augments human service with intelligence. Sarah said agents were impressed by the software’s reading of private fares and fare rules. “It frees up our people to focus on relationships and problem solving, not decoding PNRs or hunting for penalty conditions,” she said.

That is a different wager from 2009, and it is still open. The first one was that a family SME desk could live outside HRG. The second is that the same desk can multiply revenue without multiplying people. Carl’s 50-year honour does not settle that second file.

Andy told Nathan Darke of Hobart Airport he could not imagine a better place for Platinum to celebrate than Hobart. “Suits our puffer vests perfectly,” he said. The vests went home. The 2030 target did not.