CARLS O N WAGONLIT TRAVEL SA
CARLSON WAGONLIT TRAVEL SA
Taking Care
of Corporate Travel PRODUCTION: William Denstone
Carlson Wagonlit Travel South Africa knows that keeping employees safe, engaged and productive in transit should always be a top priority for any business. CEO, Louis van Zyl tells us how CWT SA has used the best technology to give it a peerless footprint to serve customers across the African continent. 2 / www.enterprise-africa.net
INDUSTRY FOCUS: TRAVEL
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Business travel is so often misconstrued as being an optional luxury, and one that in trying economic times - for example, South Africa’s recent slip back into technical recession - may be the first in line when cost cutting is considered. The opposite is true, however, and it is important for companies to not fall foul of this knee-jerk reaction; when reduction in spending is a priority, a well-managed travel policy is crucial. While tighter rules around travel may indeed reduce overspending, they will ultimately also lead to unhappy and unproductive travelling employees. The phenomenon known as ‘traveller friction’ results from stringent policy and causes stress, exhaustion and unhappiness, which can be enormously costly in the long term.
SAFER, HAPPIER TRAVEL This is where Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) South Africa is positioned to shine, helping to control travel costs and afford better care and comfort to staff on the move. In a sea of travel management companies CWT has managed to set itself apart and become the employee-preferred experience, through a combination of the business travel expertise it possesses and the blend of people and technology at its disposal. Focused on providing solutions which will help achieve business goals, CWT South Africa is a subsidiary of Bidvest’s Bidtravel, the travel services division of the leading South African international services, trading and distribution company operational across four continents. “Globally, CWT has three primary operating models,”
// WE MAKE USE OF OUR BUYING POWER BOTH NATIONALLY AND INTERNATIONALLY TO GIVE PREFERENTIAL PRICING TO OUR CUSTOMERS // says Louis van Zyl, CEO for South Africa, of the wider company’s multifaceted business strategy. “First is the proprietary business, where CWT creates a local branch or a subsidiary in a particular market or country in order to serve this new territory. The second option is one where it appoints a partner; this could be an existing company or
Maria Martins - Director of Programme Management, Pine Nel - Chief Information Officer, Phumi Mazibuko - Sales Manager & Louis van Zyl - CEO
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CARLSON WAGONLIT TRAVEL SA
travel management service, or even owner-managed operation. This is then brought on board to operate on CWT’s behalf in that market and works very much like a franchise arrangement, whereby the name and systems of CWT global are used to service primarily its existing worldwide customers.” This is a vitally important aspect of CWT’s overall success, and affords it access to some huge clients, as van Zyl sets out. “When you think about the major international conglomerates, for example the General Electrics, Amazons and Facebooks of this world, they each have a very wide international footprint. This means that when CWT concludes
an international agreement to manage the corporate travel of these companies throughout the world, it needs the presence of a partner in that market in order to best serve the organisation and its workers. “The third model, and this is where Carlson Wagonlit SA fits in to the equation, is a joint venture,” van Zyl explains. “In these instances, CWT owns a minority equity stake of an operation and the local company will then operate as CWT in that market. Our South African division is an example of this third business approach, and the idea to form CWT South Africa came about in the early 2000s, when an opportunity
// WE REMAIN FOCUSED ON DELIVERING A TECHNOLOGY-DRIVEN, CONSUMER-GRADE EXPERIENCE ACROSS ALL CHANNELS //
arose for a joint venture agreement with one of the companies within Bidtravel Concorde Travel.” BidTravel has been in existence for well over 20 years and is a division within the greater Bidvest stable, which is one of the largest industrial holdings companies in South Africa. “The agreement reached almost 20 years ago means that Concorde Travel maintains an equity holding of the company but the majority is still held by Bidtravel, and we act as the local joint venture partner of CWT to give us this presence in South Africa.” MAKING LIFE SIMPLE Managing a business travel program no longer needs to be complicated, and CWT South Africa offers a ‘one-stop shop’ solution, greatly streamlining what was previously a task with many different agencies involved: flights,
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INDUSTRY FOCUS: TRAVEL
// MOBILE TECHNOLOGY IS AN INTEGRAL PART OF OUR STRATEGY; WE ARE CONSTANTLY LOOKING AT HOW IT CAN BEST BE ADAPTED TO MEET THE NEEDS OF TRAVELLERS // trains, hotels, insurance - everything is covered. “In fact, we even go a little bit further,” adds van Zyl. “We not only fulfil all of their travel needs, but we also assist our corporate customers in managing their travel policies and strike up agreements with some of the major airlines, hotel chains and car hire companies representing them to negotiate corporate fares. “We make use of our buying power both nationally and internationally to attain preferential pricing to our customers.” One extremely important factor
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in this bid for a streamlined, accessible service has been CWT South Africa’s excellent implementation of the available technology. “By virtue of being a joint venture partner of CWT globally we have access to and utilise a lot of the technology employed by the company, but not only this, we also use the best-in-class technology and tools that are available to travel management companies in general. So, alongside the award-winning CWT app and its reporting and governance tool we also have access to systems like our expense management and online booking tools. “We believe that there is some amazing, leading-edge technologies out there, and so we should be able to offer our customers the very best and usher them to use it when working with us.” CWT’s To Go mobile app, which provides automatic synchronisation of CWT bookings, flight notifications and access to relevant trip-related information, was previously a winner of the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) award for innovation of the year.
The prize recognises applications that help business travellers make most productive use of their time while travelling. “We are continually looking at new ways to delight travellers by making sure they have the services they need at their fingertips, and CWT To Go is a great example of that,” said Andrew Winterton, former-President Suppliers, Products and Technology for CWT. “Mobile technology is an integral part of our strategy; we are constantly looking at how it can best be adapted to meet the needs of travellers.” The innovations which CWT continues to bring to business travel are the product of careful examination of user dynamics, van Zyl explains. “We will take our customers’ requests and requirements and interpret these to result in the most applicable, efficient technology to realise their corporate travel objectives. “It goes beyond that, though,” he says, “and also relates to applying some intuitive technology to look at trends in terms of where customers go, for instance,
CARLSON WAGONLIT TRAVEL SA
or look at their profiles and ensure that their travel documentation is all in order - if a visa is required to enter a country, or medical certificates - we want to leave nothing to chance. Our philosophy is always to implement technology where it makes most sense to us, and to help us achieve even more efficiencies.” EVEN MORE TO COME The value of CWT South Africa’s emphasis on customer comfort and ease is borne out in the strong performance it manages to keep recording, in spite of widespread economic negativity. It hasn’t been entirely plain sailing, van Zyl points out, but all the signs are very positive. “We haven’t come through completely unscathed,” he starts, “and we are definitely seeing the effects of the economic situation and the contraction of growth manifested in the corporate travel space. I think this is true for pretty much all companies like us. “By that token, however, any growth means that we are increasing our own market share, and our strategy
has brought some recent successes in the local market as well as globally. The knock-on effect of that is that we then take those customers on board into our service delivery capabilities.” Global revenue for CWT was up 1.9% last year to US$1.4 billion, while total transaction volume increased 3.6% to US$23.2 billion, including US$1.7 billion in contracted new sales. CWT increased investment in tech by 61% and surpassed one million downloads of its CWT To Go app, while the corporate meetings and events side of the business secured a 10% in business. Kurt Ekert, President and CEO of CWT, sums up that, “2017 was the year our digital strategy – CWT 3.0 – started feeding through to the numbers. We remain focused on delivering a technology-driven, consumer-grade experience across all channels – and on building a high-growth hotel distribution business. “Our 2017 results show our strategy is working.” The strategy for CWT South
Africa to produce a repeat of this success involves maximising the collaboration with its existing peers, van Zyl concludes. “Moving forward we will focus on expanding our role and working with other CWT partners already in existence throughout Africa. “Where we see ourselves as having a major role is the interaction with the African partner network, and our ability to provide a seamless travel experience for our corporates, whether they are situated in South Africa or in any of the sub-Saharan areas,” lays out van Zyl. “CWT has the largest network of African partners of any corporate global travel management company, so we see it as key to leverage our unparalleled presence and build a highly effective network of travel providers throughout the whole continent.”
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Published by CMB Media Group Chris Bolderstone – General Manager E. chris@cmb-media.co.uk Sackville Place, 44-48 Magdalen Street, Norwich, NR3 1JU T. +44 (0) 20 8123 7859 E. info@cmb-media.co.uk www.cmb-media.co.uk CMB Media Group does not accept responsibility for omissions or errors. The points of view expressed in articles by attributing writers and/ or in advertisements included in this magazine do not necessarily represent those of the publisher. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained within this magazine, no legal responsibility will be accepted by the publishers for loss arising from use of information published. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in a retrievable system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher. Š CMB Media Group Ltd 2018
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NOVEMBER 2018