Carlson Wagonlit Travel looks to expand India footprint

Geeta Jain

CEO-India, Carlson Wagonlit Travel

talks to Girja Shankar Kaura 

Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) is a global specialist in managing business travel, meetings and events for companies, governments and NGOs. The company is looking to increase its footprint in India’s fast-growing business travel market. Geeta Jain, CEO-India, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, talks about the company’s future plans.

Q. How would you define the travel management business? How is it different from the travel agency set-up?

A. A travel agency set-up is very transactional in nature and mostly supports customers with certain elements of their travel arrangements (e.g. booking flights or hotels, visa applications). Corporate travel management, on the other hand, is about managing the overall travel needs of a company.

Travel Management Companies like Carlson Wagonlit Travel support corporates and their business travellers in making end-to-end travel arrangements. Unlike leisure travel, which typically involves booking flights and accommodation, business travel involves many other considerations.

Most multinational companies today have travel policies in place — a set of rules or guidelines around business travel, which their employees are expected to follow (e.g. which hotels and airlines they can book for business trips, whether they’re allowed to fly business class, how much they can spend on a flight or hotel room etc.). We help companies ensure that their travellers make bookings in compliance with their corporate travel policy as well as the regulatory environment.

We also help companies track where their employees are travelling to and where they are staying, allowing the company to easily reach them in emergency situations and ensure their safety and security when they travel for work.

Q. What has been the response from the Indian market to the concept of managed travel services? What role has CWT played in popularising this concept in India?

A. India is still in the relatively early stages of adopting managed travel, but there is far more awareness today than there was a decade ago. India continues to be a very price-sensitive market and therefore driving savings remains one of the key considerations for many corporate travel programmes. Corporates are getting increasingly sensitive and alert to the need for traveller safety and security, compliance to internal policy and external regulations, and also to a certain extent to the comfort and convenience of their travellers. These form critical elements of a mature travel programme anywhere in the world, and we see some encouraging trends in India as well.

Q. As per a recent report, India is poised to be among top six Business Travel Markets by year 2019. What is CWT’s growth strategy to tap into this opportunity?

A. India is expected to be one of the fastest growing business travel markets over the next five years, which is definitely exciting for us. It is equally exciting to note that this growth is likely to be driven by Indian companies and SMEs. These two segments present an enormous opportunity for us, since a large part of this market is still “unmanaged” in the true sense of a corporate travel programme. Recognising this, we are launching products and services that would meet the unique requirements of these corporates.

Q. How is India as a market different than other countries where CWT operates?

A. India continues to be a very high touch market. As a result, a lot of corporates still prefer to have onsite service configurations where our client servicing teams operate from client offices instead of our own state-of-the-art servicing centres.

The adoption of self-servicing technology in the corporate travel world in India is still very low. This contrasts strongly with the retail consumer behaviour.

India is one of the most price-sensitive markets, and therefore it is a challenge to create a strong return on investment (ROI) for launching value-add products and services in India.

Q. How many companies does CWT work with in India?

A. CWT services about 200 corporates in India, with a healthy mix of our global customers as well as Indian corporates. Increasingly, we are focused on growing our presence with Indian corporates and SMEs. We expect a large part of our growth in 2017 and beyond to be driven by demand from Indian companies.