Business Travel News
on Monday evening named Maria Chevalier, Johnson & Johnson global director
of travel and meeting services, as the 2010 Travel Manager of the Year.
BTN editor-in-chief David Meyer, in naming Chevalier, cited "her
innovation, communications skill and teamwork as well as her commitment to
advancing industry and company practices involving global consolidation,
supplier relations and data management on several fronts."
Among her accomplishments, Chevalier led her team in
tackling global hotel and airline contracts to largely eliminate ancillary
fees, globalizing a fragmented meetings and travel program, fostering
development of a central database of traveler and trip information and leading
industry efforts to advance crisis management and bolster hotel rate-loading
accuracy.
Chevalier, who started work at J&J in 2008 following her
role in a consulting position with BCD Travel, said the company's structure provides
a particular challenge when it comes to globalization. It's made up of about
250 operating companies in more then 80 countries.
"In a non-mandated culture, this is the challenge we
deal with every day," she said. "We're in about every country there is,
and if we're not physically there, we're traveling there."
In 2009, Chevalier and her team began their globalization
efforts, moving meetings and travel through one source and one technology
platform. They put American Express in place as the company's global agency and
aggressively implemented and pushed usage of StarCite's technology platform,
and most markets are now on board, including many accustomed to using their own
travel company for more than a decade.
She and her team also have globalized their travel delivery
standards, making key service metrics and reporting components common across
regions.
Because of the strict regulations around travel in the
healthcare industry, Chevalier and her team also worked with American Express
to develop a rigid training program for any agents working with J&J. "Basically,
they have to be 100 percent on their testing, or they cannot be on our account,"
Chevalier said. "No compromise. It's that critical."
Besides the globalization efforts, Chevalier and her team also
have focused on other ways to enhance data. For example, they've created a
central repository of all traveler and trip information, including traveler
types, trip purpose and details. This allows the team to better determine goals
and policy, she said.
Recent contracting focus has been on ancillary fees across
travel categories, be it Internet charges from upper tier hotels or the variety
of airline fees that have sprung up in recent years.
"Everybody is doing this a la carte approach, so we've
focused on trying to leverage where we have spend in those areas,"
Chevalier said. "We've focused on a global approach versus a local
approach, which is progressive."
Ultimately, J&J has been largely successful in
eliminating ancillary fees globally, she said. For example, the company was
able to negotiate Internet access with a major hotel company globally when it
was not available from the suppliers locally. "Not everyone came to the
dance, but we had some success," she said.
Other contracting success has focused on improving the
accuracy of the rate loading process, for which Chevalier was named one of BTN's Best Practitioners in 2009. J&J
also has worked to reduce buyer penalties in meetings contracts, such as
attrition and cancellation clauses, while instituting service-level agreements
for the suppliers for such aspects as meal delivery.
"Hotel contracts have always been very heavy with
penalties should the customer not perform and weak on penalties if the hotel
doesn't perform," she said. "We're trying to undo that."