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CWT Can Help Companies Save up to 25% on Meetings and Events Spending with CWT Meeting Optimizer

• Available today, CWT Meeting Optimizer helps any individual in a company plan their meetings.
• It gives top destinations by air and hotel costs, mileage, or CO emissions using CWT’s wealth of data.
• It helps travel managers better understand what their companies are spending on meetings.

AMSTERDAM, April 18, 2012 - Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT), a global leader specialized in managing business travel and meetings and events, announced today that CWT Meeting Optimizer is now available for all CWT clients. This is the first in a series of meetings products to be introduced this year as a complementary offering to CWT Meetings & Events. CWT Meeting Optimizer was developed in partnership with StarCite®, part of Active Network, and a leader in strategic meetings management.

Finding the best place for a meeting
CWT Meeting Optimizer helps individual organizers and professional meeting planners easily find the best location for a meeting of any size. To plan a meeting, meeting arrangers simply enter the number of participants, their locations and the meeting dates. CWT Meeting Optimizer then generates a list of worldwide destinations, including telepresence rooms, to give meeting organizers a prioritized list of places to hold their meeting.

Using CWT’s extensive range of data – over 14 million hotel transactions and 34 million air transactions* – CWT Meeting Optimizer instantly compares nearly 2000 global destinations to determine the smartest and most cost-effective meeting destination.

Helping companies achieve savings
CWT calculated the cost of 15 hypothetical international meetings in 2011 using no planning tool, and then estimated the cost of the same meeting benchmarked and planned using CWT Meeting Optimizer. The results showed that an average saving of 25 percent could have been achieved.

Based on a study conducted by the CWT Travel Management Institute, companies spend on average almost 1.5 percent of their annual revenues on meetings and events, yet this budget is difficult to track because meetings are not always managed centrally. With CWT Meeting Optimizer, planning meetings becomes an integral part of a company’s travel program as the tool will be accessible through CWT’s exclusive client interface, CWT Portal.

CWT Meeting Optimizer is based on new generation technology and a patent-pending algorithm. Additional features will be added over the coming months.

CWT will be present at the IMEX 2012 show in Frankfurt May 22 – 24.
For a live demo of CWT Meeting Optimizer, please contact us!

*CWT 2011 air and hotel transaction figures for wholly owned operations and joint ventures

About Carlson Wagonlit Travel
CWT is a global leader specialized in managing business travel and meetings and events. CWT serves companies, government institutions and non-governmental organizations of all sizes in more than 150 countries and territories. By leveraging both the expertise of its people and leading-edge technology, CWT helps clients derive the greatest value from their travel program in terms of savings, service, security and sustainability. The company is also committed to providing best-in-class service and assistance to travelers. CWT services and solutions comprise Traveler & Transaction Services, Program Optimization, Safety & Security, Meetings & Events and Energy Services. In 2011, sales volume for wholly owned operations and joint ventures totaled US$28.0 billion. For more information about CWT, please visit our global website at www.carlsonwagonlit.com. Follow us on Twitter@CarlsonWagonlit.

Media Contact
Natasha Harvey
CWT Global
+ 33 1 41 33 62 34 (office)
+ 33 6 74 94 23 81 (mobile)
nharvey@carlsonwagonlit.com

StarCite is a registered trademark of The Active Network, Inc.

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