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CWT launches information portal

May 15, 2007 | Hospitality Industry

Carlson Wagonlit Travel last month launched its new Program Management Center as a "gateway" to "simplify, prioritize and optimize" travel program management. The travel management company is one of many industry providers that are developing improved data reporting technology.

Rolled out to more than 10,000 corporate clients, CWT’s new toolset provides global, national and regional views of travel data in nine languages and multiple currencies, including an option to track spending trends via a “flat currency” that eliminates currency fluctuations. Managers can monitor market share, online booking adoption, missed hotel bookings, low fare acceptance or overall air spend by period.

During the past four years, CWT invested millions of dollars to build and migrate offices to a new travel data warehouse. With more than 95 percent or about $8 billion worth of travel data now normalized and standardized in this “Glory” database, CWT turned its attention to the front-end applications “to help clients more easily monitor their programs and understand their compliance,” said director of global client reporting product management Leisha Lindsay.

CWT built “dashboard” tools and showed them to more than 100 clients in the United States, Montreal, Barcelona and Dublin, Lindsay said. The final product factors in client feedback.

Many travel management providers are enhancing and demonstrating client reporting systems using dashboard-style interfaces. They offer screens full of charts, graphs and progress bars that quickly paint pictures of travel spending and performance on key metrics. The goal is to provide decision-makers with broader, real-time, interactive views of travel spending, security information, booking methods, policy compliance and other travel program elements.

Get the full story at Management.travel

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