Anne Hamilton
VP, Global Travel Services
The Walt Disney Co.
"Disney is unlike other travel programs, [given] the sheer number of non-employees that we book for sports, entertainment, news, production teams," said Anne Hamilton about The Walt Disney Co.'s corporate travel program. "All these individuals needed access to online tools, travel profiles and managed policy; they also needed Disney to ensure [personal identifiable information] adherence, automated virtual billing and enhanced data reporting for traveler safety and security."
Hamilton and her team took on the challenge of disparate systems used to manage non-employee travel and created the connections—as well as the payment mechanism—to ensure non-employee travel was a positive experience for the traveler and delivered a turnkey internal workflow and reconciliation for the program administrators.
Working with Disney vendors—Sureware, Grasp, Cvent, Concur and American Express Global Business Travel—Hamilton and her team designed and created a single-sign-on, self-service platform for non-employees with a two-factor credential management gateway for secure travel profiles and creating a user in the booking tools, a process that linked Cvent, Concur and Sabre.
As a result of this process, the non-employee registers for a travel event in Cvent, reserves in Concur via a pre-approved link and purchases the allowed ticket.
Agents can service the traveler since a travel profile now exists via the Cvent registration. Because of the travel profile, passenger name records contain accounting, management information and specifications for automated virtual billing.
The project has delivered improved traveler experience, adherence to travel policy, agent time management savings, lower transaction costs, enhanced data and Level 3 data reporting on air, hotel and ground transactions. It has eliminated man-hours previously spent on reporting, created finance team efficiencies, delivered on-time credit card payments, accurate C-suite reporting, and trip data for risk management reports since bookings stay within Disney's approved channels.
Hamilton said she is most proud of the Disney team for its work on hotel virtual payment solutions, which are applied across group and event contracts and transient hotel bookings.
"Using GraspPay, we transmit transient hotel billing instructions to the hotel PMS, which removes the dependency of the legacy 'direct-bill letter,' " she said, referring to the fax confirmation that has been the fly in the ointment of virtual pay solutions. "This has improved our travelers' interaction with the front desk, enhancing that all important traveler experience."
Disney previously has been recognized for its work in bringing Marriott into the virtual pay fold. The program has delivered benefits not only to Disney's non-employee travelers and its internal teams. The virtual pay configuration also allows hotels to be paid more quickly—sometimes months quicker than industry standard. The new processes have created a win-win for Disney and its suppliers and can serve as a model for other programs.