Mr. Foster Drops Bank

Although both sides insist the parting is amicable, the year-old relationship between the Ask Mr. Foster travel agency and Crocker National Bank is over, a victim of the bank’s shrinking travel budget and the agency’s shriveling profit margins.

Ask Mr. Foster, based in Van Nuys, announced in a press release that it would no longer handle the San Francisco bank’s travel “due to an inadequate return on our investment.”

The statement noted that Crocker had reduced travel expenses significantly since the travel bureau took on the account a year ago.

Jay R. Dixon, a Crocker vice president in charge of monitoring company travel, said Ask Mr. Foster was right: The bank’s travel costs are down. First-class travel has been eliminated except for the most senior executives, unnecessary trips have been canceled and the bank has negotiated its own cut-rate deals with a number of hotels and airlines.

Dixon said the bank will have no trouble finding another agency to handle Crocker’s remaining business. “There’s no dearth of agencies knocking on our door,” he said.

Just beneath the surface of the dispute is a little-known fact of corporate travel. Because of the large volume of travel at big companies, travel agencies bid aggressively for their accounts.

To lure the business, they offer their client companies a cut of the commissions that they receive from airlines, hotels and car rental firms.

Although neither Crocker nor Ask Mr. Foster would reveal the terms of the commission-sharing deal, it appears that the travel agency offered the bank too much of a percentage for it to make any money. Thus, it dumped the account and told Crocker to find another agency.

“We are committed to make a profit on every account we handle,” the Ask Mr. Foster release noted. “Since Crocker Bank was unwilling to renegotiate the revenue-sharing arrangement, we were left with no choice but to resign the account.”