Travel management company Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) reported a strong financial performance for 2017, with transaction volume up 3.6 per cent, revenues up 1.9 per cent, and US$1.7bn in contracted new sales, due to particularly robust growth in Asia-Pacific and the Americas. “2017 was the year our digital transformation strategy – CWT 3.0 – started feeding through to the numbers,” said Kurt Ekert, President & CEO of Carlson Wagonlit Travel. “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.”
In 2017, CWT became the first TMC to build and launch its own hotel distribution business, RoomIt by CWT. This is the first TMC-developed hotel-focused proposition, designed to provide travelers with rooms, rates, amenities and loyalty programs, by integrating retail and corporate-negotiated hotel rates with those from a number of other large hotel content providers. During 2017, yearon-year hotel revenue growth was up 13%, underlining the importance of better content and hotel booking capabilities.
2017 also saw the successful transfer of myCWT, the company’s proprietary travel booking portal, onto a single, self-contained platform, owned and operated by CWT. The move is part of CWT 3.0, enabling the delivery of new products more quickly and easily, and providing customers with a better service and more innovation.
CWT also passed the one-millionth registered user milestone for the mobile app, CWT To Go, and began trialing air booking capabilities.
