World Class travel for Corporations such as Fortune 500 companies, those with Global presence and multiple offices around the Globe, is the clientele of Carlson. CWT is a privately held travel management company held by Carlson Companies that handles both for business and leisure clients. With their presence in 157 countries and territories, CWT has grown to 22,000 employees worldwide and according to Business Travel News Online.com, in 2007, CWT surpassed American Express Business Travel and became the world’s largest business travel management company. The company has $27.8 billion in annual sales (including joint ventures) in 2008, from 55 million transactions.
Since it started operation in 1994, CWT is the result of a 50%/50% merger from two large travel agency ventures. The Carlson side was originally from the Ask Mr. Foster Travel Agency chain, which had been rebranded to Carlson Travel Network a decade earlier. The Wagonlit part came from the travel shop business of Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. After the merger, Accor maintained its 50% interest up until 2006. Accor sold its shares in a transaction worth €500m, thereby placing a value of €1bn on CWT at the time.
On June 22, 2014, the company announced that Carlson, a privately held corporation in the hotel, marketing, restaurant, and travel industries which owned a 55% stake in the company, would purchase the remaining 45%, held by JP Morgan Chase and in 2011, Carlson Leisure’s Macy’s Travel were rebranded as Carlson Wagonlit Travel; the stores were located in former Marshall Field’s department stores and were known as Marshall Field’s Travel before the stores were purchased by Macy’s; Marshall Field’s was owned by Twin Cities based Target Corporation, similar to Carlson Wagonlit Travel co-owner Carlson Companies. Macy’s Travel had joined Carlson Wagonlit Travel in 2006 when TQ3Navigant was purchased by CWT.
So what made CWT decide to open market in the Philippines?
CWT has operated in the Philippines for more than 20 years now through its local partner Rajah Travel who acts as their fulfillment arm. The need to great a regional and global Network Operations Center, and the crave for expansion to support English speaking countries that are not sensitive to local support and presence, the Philippines has been the best choice based on certain criteria like English speaking personnel (220), highly skilled and trained Technical staff and developers (60 of them), and the positive attitude of people who are willing to serve inbound customers who needs assistance for their travel. The Philippine office has a complimentary number of 280 todate, but expects to reach a total number of 600 by mid of 2015.
CWT has chosen Zuellig building, located at the Central Business District of Makati, along Paseo de Roxas and Makati avenue, which is a PEZA grade building and has the highest standard of Security, backup power and presence of telco to support different connections around the Globe from various providers.
The CWT office is located at the 31st and 32nd floors of Operation, where the training centers and trainors and another floor where the servers for all the international offices are hosted. CWT assures a fully redundant, secured and through any weather or surge, they will be able to operate continuously. They also have the state of the art equipment using Avaya system for their phone, Polycom for their video-conferencing and button mic for their internal conferencing and large LCDs for their inter office use.
CWT will continue its partnership with Rajah Travel, who has offices in major cities in the Philippines.
