<B>CWT In Mtgs. Bid</B>
By Chris Davis
Mega travel agency Carlson Wagonlit Travel, for years a relatively modest presence in the meetings management industry given its size and number of large corporate travel accounts, has developed an extensive corporate group travel procurement model that includes consolidation, fulfillment and policy development capabilities.
The focus of Carlson Wagonlit's model is front-end meetings procurement, including consolidating data for negotiating purposes, developing separate meeting policies and budgets, and assigning their control to one person in the corporation. CWT also will offer existing technology and group air fulfillment.
The new initiative is headed by Peter Moen, Carlson Wagonlit general manager of meetings management, and Jeff Lang, director of the agency's meetings management solutions group.
"This is a new approach to the meetings business, as travel agencies have traditionally seen meetings as logistics that they have to do because customers need that type of service with corporate travel," Moen said. "But we see it as a very large cost-savings opportunity, if it's approached in the right way. Our approach is a travel management/procurement approach with two drivers: the increasing focus on taking costs out by corporations and the access and advantages the Internet provides businesses. We are leveraging technology, experience and service capabilities."
The new initiative has caused some shifting of roles within the company. Carlson's meetings consolidation efforts previously were conducted by Carlson Wagonlit Travel's sister company, Carlson Marketing Group, which last fall introduced an Internet-based meetings data consolidation tool, called MeetingsLogic, but handled no other types of travel, while Carlson Wagonlit handled single-meeting planning and management. Carlson Marketing Group still will be involved in the process, as will its director of consolidation Laura Wells, said Moen.
Carlson Wagonlit surveyed 27 of its corporate travel clients, with varying travel expenditures, about their meetings management programs and found that more than 40 percent could not estimate their meeting spend, but those who could placed it at about 25 percent of total T&E. This, Lang said, is the basis of the initiative: offering corporations tools and consulting services to compile meetings expenditures as a single budgetary line item; defining policies about registration, ticketing and the procurement processes; and consolidating the data for negotiations.
"A lot of best meeting practices mirror what companies were doing 10 or 20 years ago with their transient program," Lang said. "In my experience, there was very little activity in clients coming to us to consolidate their meetings program until one year ago. They were handled on an ad hoc basis, meeting by meeting, but now there's intense pressure on taking costs out. We go to the clients and show them where the money is."
Carlson Wagonlit Travel is the second-largest corporate-owned travel agency in the United States, based on total air sales. As the largest, American Express outsources its corporate meeting management and consolidation functions to TQ3 Maritz Travel Solutions of St. Louis and subsidiary American Express One of Mt. Laurel, N.J. Carlson Wagonlit would be the largest single agency to directly handle the corporate meetings consolidation needs of all interested clients.
Though not all of CWT's corporate accounts contacted by Meetings Today were aware of the new initiative, some already have taken the first step toward using CWT's consolidation tools.
"We are deploying the initiative using a Web-based tool created by Carlson," said Bob Ridpath, director of global travel for Brampton, Ontario-based Nortel Networks Corp., ranked 14th on BTN's Corporate Travel 100 Index (BTN, Aug. 28, 2000). "We're in the early stages, but it looks like a very viable solution. Getting a consolidated view of our meetings to leverage the volume has been one big challenge for us."
Ridpath said Nortel is working with Carlson Wagonlit to consolidate all small and midsize meetings, as TQ3 Maritz Travel Solutions handles larger sales and marketing events.
"We're trying to tie this into our global hotel program and create standardized hotel contracts," Ridpath said. "We'd like to tie that into our transient program, which is a good fit for the small meetings since it is predominately internal travel."
However, not every corporation embraced the upcoming CWT solution. "We're not interested," said one travel manager who requested anonymity. "They've taken the GetThere/AllMeetings solution, added a few proprietary bells and whistles and added the consulting. Jeff Lang is brilliant and a significant asset, but the savings their program would realize is not commensurate with the outlay they're looking for."
Last fall, Carlson Marketing Group formed a partnership with GetThere DirectMeetings--formerly AllMeetings--to provide online site selection and other travel sourcing capabilities for MeetingsLogic (Meetings Today, Oct. 30, 2000).
If successful, the move could spark more competition among the primary meetings consolidation players, including TQ3 Maritz, McGettigan Partners of Philadelphia, the meetings division of WorldTravel BTI of Atlanta and American Express One. But Carlson Wagonlit Travel's competitors were nonplussed when told the news.
"There is a lot of meetings consolidation business out there, and you see the same names on the mega RFPs: Maritz, McGettigan, WorldTravel and sometimes Carlson and sometimes not," said Janice Blevins, vice president of meetings management for TQ3 Maritz Travel Solutions. "And each of those companies has its own expertise, be it planning, technology or consulting. Where Carlson Wagonlit's niche is remains to be seen, but they have made the decision to be a player in this business."
"I can comfortably predict that they will be successful," said Jay Roseman, vice president of meetings and incentives at American Express One. "There's huge opportunity in this area for all of us. We place a lot of stock in this and, if they are catering to the unmanaged market, it's a very broad opportunity. We've already been running in that space, but there will be an expanded need as corporations continue to move this way. Everyone should be there.