Carlson Wagonlit Travel, the global travel management company, has introduced Predictive Analytics capabilities, significantly improving the accuracy of forecasts, providing much better visibility over key travel metrics, and giving clients new opportunities to control travel spend.
CWT Solutions Group, CWT’s consulting division, has built an advanced data model that sifts through large historic travel data sets, as well as public data on commodity prices, macro-economic indicators, weather, and holidays. Those data are analyzed to identify patterns and correlations, generating robust predictions for a company’s future spend, specifically number of trips and cost per trip.
“With these new cutting-edge algorithms, we can predict a company’s spend with remarkable accuracy,” said Christophe Renard, Vice President of CWT Solutions Group. “Predictive Analytics is very helpful in giving our clients actionable insights - even small changes to travel policies or supplier programs can lead to big savings. As one of the world’s largest business travel companies, we are sitting on a treasure trove of data. Using Predictive Data, we can really make that data work for our clients.”
A successful trial of Predictive Analytics with one of CWT Solutions Group’s largest global clients delivered a sharp improvement in accuracy compared to previous approaches. Using this new capability, the client was able to identify areas with potential savings of up to 10%. The trial also demonstrated that results get better over time as the system learns from ever-larger data sets.
The technology will be rolled out to CWT Solutions Group clients globally over the course of 2019.
Please download a copy of the CWT Solutions Group Whitepaper on Predictive Data.
Carlson Wagonlit Travel
Companies and governments rely on us to keep their people connected. We provide their travelers with a consumer-grade travel experience, combining innovative technology with our vast experience. Every day, we look after enough travelers to fill more than 260 Boeing 787s and 100,000 hotel rooms - and handle 105 events. We operate in around 150 countries, and in 2017 posted a total transaction volume of more than US$ 23 billion.
