Carlson Adds Consulting To Biz Travel Portfolio

<I>Orlando</I> - As part of its reinvention, Carlson Wagonlit Travel intends to add travel consulting to its list of fee-based services in coming months.

Competing against some of the biggest names in management consulting, as well as the experts in travel management consulting, Carlson intends to focus on helping customers develop travel strategies, write and enforce policy, select and enforce use of preferred vendors, develop global programs, consolidate meeting planning and rank performance against world-class entities.

While Carlson's account representatives might have performed such services before, the key difference in the future will be that the services come with a fee. Costs for the new business advisory services will be firmed up by spring, said Ira Kasdan, vice president of performance improvement. The fee structure will be hourly, project or performance based.

"Most T&E programs we see aren't that good," Kasdan said. "Some do a great job on travel policy or expense reimbursement, but we find almost no one is doing everything well."

The decision to launch the new service also was based on client feedback, Carlson Wagonlit Travel president and CEO Travis Tanner told more than 700 employees during the company's North American meeting, held here at Disney World earlier this month. In focus groups, "half the clients said that in three years, consulting on how to reduce travel and entertainment costs will be the service that is most important to them," Tanner said.

Initially, Carlson will focus on accounts with $2 million or more in air volume-although it won't turn away smaller accounts. Services Carlson is looking at include needs assessment, benchmarking, procurement process assessment and redesign, travel policy analysis and development, travel and travel-expense process redesign, globalization planning, and meetings, group and incentive travel consulting.

Carlson also plans to launch "change management services" to help clients change the travel behavior of employees. Training seminars, newsletters and intranet sites will be used to explain and reinforce the advantages of following policy and using preferred suppliers. More than one-quarter of focus group participants said that helping change traveler behavior would add the most value to their travel program.

Carlson also is developing a database of best practices from which it will be able to measure clients and is training salespeople to conduct a high-level assessment of each account, aided by a 40-question questionnaire.