Business travel management services provider Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) has put up a shared services site in Makati City to house the company’s only global network operations and global IT security operations center.
“Manila’s reputation as having an excellent business climate for service organizations, its rich pool of qualified talent and inherent philosophy of customer service made it CWT’s first choice for our new center,” said CWT president & CEO, Douglas Anderson. “As we grow our business around the world, an efficient, customer-focused team is key to ensuring our clients’ travel needs are well-managed.”
CWT has had a presence in the Philippines since the early 1980s when Rajah Travel joined the CWT network, providing travel services to CWT clients based in the Philippines. Rajah Travel will continue to provide services to CWT’s clients based in the country, while the new, expanded Manila office will support clients globally.
CWT’s new facility includes a consolidated service center providing internal support to CWT offices including recruitment and IT service desks. The facility also has a team that develops CWT’s products and tools. CWT’s key mobile product for corporate travel is the WorldMate app.
The global security and global network operations centers, which are the company’s only ones in the world, operates 24/7/365, monitoring and managing the performance of CWT’s systems, data centers, networks, applications and security risks around the globe.
CWT executives meet with the press (from left): Kelly L. Kuhn, President, Asia Pacific; Douglas Anderson, President and Chief Executive; and Meg Ramoso, General Manager, Philippines.
The facility also serves as a centralized travel service center, to meet the growing demand for centralized travel service offering.
Since it began operations in April 2014, the center has already grown to 280 team members, providing support to clients and employees across Asia Pacific and the globe.
The CWT employees at the center will participate in a new global CWT training program this year, designed to shape travel counselors of the future. The training will also be implemented in other CWT service centers around the world including Minneapolis and San Jose in Costa Rica, to ensure a consistent and effective global offering for all clients.
Focusing on mobile for business travelers
In a meeting with members of the media, Andersen said the future of business travel management is in mobile. “More than 50% of business travelers use mobile for travel information,” he said.
He said that the mobile trend was behind the reason the company bought WorldMate, a provider of mobile travel technology, in 2012. “The acquisition put us in an exciting place within the industry; working with the expert in mobile technology puts us in control of our own ‘mobile destiny’,” he said.
