Carlson Wagonlit Travel today unveiled a new three-year growth strategy, new traveler Internet checkin and alert capabilities and plans for increased reporting and compliance enhancements to its travel manager portal, including the integration of credit card data and agency data.
CWT said it plans this year to improve on the reporting capabilities it delivers through the CWT Program Management Center by integrating additional data, including matching credit card data with agency data and integrating additional pre-ticket data to better measure compliance through a closing of the gap between booked and actual data.
Outgoing president and CEO Hubert Joly, who transitions to the CEO role at CWT majority owner Carlson Cos. on March 1
(BTNonline, Jan. 22), said key priorities for growth through 2010 include some targeted acquisitions, expanding its hotel business—which in 2007 saw a 19 percent rise in sales and the establishment of dedicated hotel reservation centers in the United Kingdom, France and Italy—and increasing its focus on meetings and events, which increased in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region by 26 percent from the prior year to about $400 million in 2007.
The company also plans to launch this year an interactive "intelligent itinerary" tool that will provide travel security alerts, airline checkin links and preferred travel supplier links and flight details, such as seat assignments. In addition, Joly said CWT is working on integrating social networking capabilities into the itinerary tool to alert travelers of coworkers on the same flight or at the same destination. The tool also houses rebooking interface capabilities with CWT.
Meanwhile, privately held CWT claimed its business travel sales increased 31.7 percent to $24.5 billion in 2007, including a 55 percent increase in new business sales, which were $3 billion. The sales figures exclude joint ventures, according to the company.
While the company claimed more than 25 percent growth in countries including China, Russia and the United Kingdom, it showed its largest growth in the United States, where sales increased by 45 percent over 2006. During the year, the company completed the integration of mega travel management company Navigant, which it acquired the year before.
While some travel management companies expressed concern over the economic slowdown negatively affecting business travel volumes, Joly said there has been a "disconnect between the financial markets and CWT's clients." While the company budgeted in "prudent fashion" for 2008 based on an average market growth of 2 percent, Joly said CWT's European volume increased 11 percent in January compared with January 2006 and U.S. volume increased in the high single digits.