Travel management company Carlson Wagonlit Travel late last month announced a three-year agreement designating meetings management technology company StarCite as a global preferred technology partner for meetings. StarCite last month also announced an agreement to link to global distribution system Amadeus and capture travel information in StarCite.
CWT's agreement with StarCite coincides with the phaseout of its MeetingsLogic meetings tech solution.
"We developed MeetingsLogic in conjunction with Carlson Marketing mainly because there was, at that point, some gaps in the functionality of meetings technology compared to what we felt our clients needed," said Tony Wagner, vice president of meetings and events for North America for CWT. "We looked at what point third-party technology and the investments they make met our needs so we don't have to invest ourselves. We felt that StarCite had done that at this point."
CWT has been rolling out StarCite in the United States and Canada during the past few months, and is working to do so in Europe and Asia/Pacific, Wagner said.
The company will transition its MeetingsLogic customers next year. "We'll work with clients individually to make sure the functionality they had with MeetingsLogic is at par with the integration with StarCite," Wagner said. Customers can also tap into StarCite and American Express' Meetings360 solution
(BTNonline, June 30).CWT is working to allow online travel booking through its Horizon tool at the point of meetings registration, Wagner said.
That ability is a key wrinkle of the deal between StarCite and Amadeus, which by year-end will allow online booking through Amadeus E-Travel Management at the point of meetings registration through StarCite. Users also will have the ability to pull booking information back into StarCite through the Amadeus GDS.
"It will be a seamless and user-friendly experience," said Bob Bennett, StarCite senior vice president of business development. "The registration solution that we have becomes the central repository for all the attendee movement information."
The agreement with Amadeus is "an important one," said meetings technology consultant Corbin Ball, president of Bellingham, Wash.-based Corbin Ball Associates. "StarCite has done arrangements with Cliqbook and other systems before, but this is a major global distribution system," he said. "From an attendee management standpoint, the hardest part is connecting in with the travel management component."