Mormons Employ Innovative Techniques
Mormons Employ Innovative Techniques
Dir. Purchasing, Travel Services: Calvin Smoot
Organization: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Headquarters: Salt Lake City
Global Air Volume: $80 million
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is quite different from a corporate entity, yet its travel program has many of the same characteristics. It also has made a few innovations that enable its tens of thousands of travelers to more cost-effectively cross the globe, including netting out frequent flyer miles from its airline deals.
Because of its global reach, the Church contracts with 45 different airlines. Each of the Church's missions is assigned a preferred carrier. "We may tell an airline that they have 110 missions, so they are our primary. And maybe 80 missions means they are secondary overall," said Calvin Smoot, director of purchasing and travel services, who manages a massive growing global airline program, newly integrated travel operations at Brigham Young University's three campuses and an innovative and far-reaching international visa program. "We are unique because we have lots of one-way tickets. And an advantage in negotiating is that most of our travelers—young missionaries—don't have frequent flyer cards so we get the airlines to net out the frequent flyer points. When it comes to travel, we are as global as any company in the world. Anywhere you put your finger on the map, we are there." The organization has 35 offices around the world, coordinating travel to and from 330 missions, and a total T&E budget of $130 million.
One of the bigger initiatives in the works is an enhanced tracking system for the Church's innovative international visa processing system. First developed in 1997 with the help of The World Bank (BTN, April 28, 1997), and improved several times since, the system processes 20,000 long-term visas each year and is one of the largest in the world, according to Smoot. "It is automated to the point where it is preprogrammed to input all of a missionary's information, print out whichever forms are necessary for that particular part of the world and send the forms out to the missionary," he said. "Now we are developing a system that will track all these visas and send out alerts for renewals." The system also includes short-term visas for the Church's regular corporate travelers and is expanding to include country-to-country functionality, rather than just travel into and out of the United States.
Other changes to the Church program this year included the integration of BYU's travel operations from each of the three campuses—Provo, Hawaii and Idaho. "They have all the normal travel a university would have—athletic teams, ambassadorial program, studies abroad, student travel, charter, corporate travel, etc.," Smoot said. "We now include their spend with our own." Also new this year is in-house coordination of Mormon Tabernacle Choir travel, previously outsourced. For example, the Church last month arranged three charter flights for the choir, including services provided via FlightTime and a jet furnished by Frontier Airlines.
Meanwhile, the Church is evaluating online booking systems, leaning toward either the American Express, Carlson Wagonlit Travel or WorldTravel BTI product. "We developed a simplified one via our intranet through Galileo to create a preliminary PNR, but now we are looking for one to put on the desktop and book corporate rates," Smoot said, noting that such a product will be top of mind during this week's NBTA conference.
The Church's travel staff numbers 144 and all travel bookings are handled in the main office under a rent-a-plate arrangement with CWT and using the Galileo reservations system. Roughly 80 percent of Church travel operations outside of the United States also is handled by CWT. "The only reason we are not an Airlines Reporting Corp.-accredited Corporate Travel Department is because we need Carlson's overseas presence," Smoot said.
Airlines have found the Church to be a lucrative account. Of the $80 million in air spend, two-thirds are international and 85 percent of all tickets are one-way bookings, primarily missionaries setting off on lengthy journeys. The remaining 15 percent of tickets are typical corporate travel: contracted coach class rates and premium class travel for 300 Church leaders. Stateside, United Airlines is the primary air carrier, followed by American and Delta. Overall, the Church's compliance in using negotiated rates is above 80 percent. "The airlines have been good to the Church and we have been good to them," Smoot said. The Church's hotel spend is not nearly as large. At times, the organization relies on CWT's rates, though Smoot occasionally takes on individual negotiations with properties in certain locations. Primary car suppliers are Hertz and Alamo. Travel expenses are charged to the American Express corporate card. Regular corporate travelers are billed individually, while overseas missionaries have a central bill arrangement. The expense reporting system is provided by PeopleSoft, which Smoot helped beta test back in 1997.
Smoot is a current NBTA board member and president of the Utah BTA chapter. In August 2000, he was presented with NBTA's President's Award. He also serves on the corporate advisory boards of United Airlines, Galileo and CWT.