Carlson Wagonlit Travel Solutions Group has hired David Kilduff, former head of rental car procurement for Eclipse Advisors, a division of American Express Business Travel, and a longtime Hertz executive, to found a ground transportation consulting practice.
"For us this was a very natural next step," said Nick Vournakis, vice president of the CWT Solutions Group—Americas. "We have invested a lot of time and resources into creating and evolving our airline and hotel practices. Ground transportation is a complement to what we already do and we are thrilled that we could recruit a resource that has as much experience as David Kilduff."
As managing director of ground transportation, Kilduff said his intent is to offer "this service to any potential customer for CWT Solutions Group in the CWT network or outside. The goal is to help customers manage their spend on an ongoing basis. We are very sensitive to the fact that the category is ground transportation, not just rental car."
Asked if the increase in the past few years in the number of corporate requests for proposals for chauffeured transportation services was part of the rationale to launch the practice
(BTN, July 17, 2006), Kilduff said, "Absolutely. There's a big need and not a lot of concentration on it in the past. That's why there's a business here."
Even though the practice has just begun, it already has had a client engagement.
"A lot of people see ground is 10 percent of overall spend and they are busy doing air, hotel and TMCs, when in fact ground involves a lot of money," Kilduff said. "Our first customer was an $11 million car rental account and we just finished the final negotiations. They ended up with a multiyear deal that will save them a more than $1 million from what they spend today. This was a combination of analytics, negotiations and optimization. The customer would have been happy with the goal of holding increases to 3 percent. Instead, we got them a substantial decrease and a long-term agreement.
Vournakis said the company went through "a very robust due-diligence process to evaluate how we were going to address this area for our clients and we're fully confident that this practice could live on its own if necessary, based on client demand."
Beyond air, hotel and ground, he said "we believe that there will be more opportunities to expand our offer in the near future, so stay tuned."