Copenhagen - The BTN Group on Tuesday named Stephan Hylander, purchasing manager for marketing and travel for The Volvo Group, its 2014 Multinational Travel Manager Of The Year.
Hylander "combined both industry knowledge and innovative thinking to lead a five-year effort to implement a global travel strategy focused on compliance and deploy it in almost every country where the company operates," said The BTN Group editorial director David Meyer here during the award presentation at an Association of Corporate Travel Executives conference.
Meyer noted Volvo's "TMC selection was done at the national level in coordination with a global strategy that established a baseline for fulfillment" and that Hylander "led a globally coordinated approach to national hotel sourcing in most of the countries where it operates."
Of particular note is Hylander's approach to airline contracting, Meyer said. Volvo has "implemented airline contracts in which every fare is a corporate fare," so that travelers always receive discounts.
"In that first full year of having the contract with a dozen individual airlines, the savings were approximately 12 percent compared with the year before," Meyer said, adding that Hylander "also measured the decrease in market share to Lufthansa, which had refused to participate in such a deal, and convinced them to adopt much of the same contract terms."
Volvo this summer signed such a contract with Star Alliance, covering "95 percent of spending for 18 countries," Meyer said.