Carlson
Wagonlit Travel this week unveiled a meeting cost estimator that uses
historical client airfare and hotel booking data to calculate the cost of a
future meeting based on attendees' points of departure. The travel management
company also revealed plans to release in June an online tool for booking meetings
of 25 or fewer attendees, including guest rooms and meeting space.
Dubbed
the CWT Meetings Optimizer, the cost estimator now is available to CWT
corporate clients for a fee. CWT global product director of meetings products Christopher
Kosel declined to specify pricing details, but said users would have the choice
of a few pricing models.
Optimizer
was developed in partnership with The Active Network's
StarCite corporate meetings technology division.
After
users input projected meeting dates, the number of attendees and their locations,
the tool aggregates client booked airfare data for the most recent 15 months
for every possible citypair that includes an attendee departure point, Kosel
said. The Optimizer melds that data with client booked hotel data to identify the
most cost-effective global destinations or telepresence rooms for the proposed
meeting (see correction below).
Users
have the option to use only a six-month aggregation of booked fares and rates,
and to limit such searches to a particular quarter. However, rates and fares
booked by all CWT clients are considered, Kosel said. "We know that our
largest clients would be interested in information that's a little more
pertinent to them, and that is one of the enhancements we're eyeing in the
future," he said.
The tool's
use of client booking data and its global scope differ from a planned meeting
cost estimator in development by meetings technology firm Cvent.
Kosel
said the Optimizer lowers meeting costs by exposing users to a wider array of
potentially less-expensive destinations. "A client might always have a
meeting where they always travel because that's where they've always traveled,"
he said. "By looking outside of their own data, they have an opportunity
to identify other opportunities they may have overlooked in the past."
CWT
claimed its data set includes more than 34 million air and more than 14 million
hotel transactions, and Kosel noted a certain threshold of historical data for
a given citypair must exist for the Optimizer to include it in the analysis.
Included destinations represent all major global business centers, he said, "as
well as a lot of tier-two and tier-three cities where we do have a lot of
travel—but they're really the primary hubs that naturally come to mind."
The TMC
said the Optimizer was the first in "a series of new meeting products that
will be available to all CWT clients," with the small-meetings booking
tool among upcoming releases.
Such booking
capabilities are not without precedent. The former meetings technology company Worktopia's attempt to book rooms and space through global distribution systems perhaps was
the most notable efforts before its 2011 acquisition by SignUp4. Worktopia's
plans were thwarted in part by difficulties in securing wide hotel acceptance,
but Kosel said hotels are already involved in CWT's concept, though more
details won't be available until the new tool is released. "Our meetings
and events organization as well as our transient supplier management teams have
been really supporting the tool," he said, "and our hotel partners
are really excited about it."
CORRECTION, April 20: An earlier version of this report incorrectly noted that
the CWT Meetings Optimizer tool incorporates food and
beverage data into its meetings cost estimates. It does not.