Carlson Wagonlit Travel has launched CWT Travel Consolidator, an analytics tool that captures every part of an organisation’s travel and expense spend.

“Gathering, matching and reconciling travel and expense data is challenging and it’s often hard to get the full picture of the total cost of a trip,” said Christophe Renard, vice president, CWT Solutions Group.

“CWT Travel Consolidator gives you that visibility – and can save up to seven per cent on travel costs.”

The web-based platform combines air, hotel and ground transport transactions booked through the travel management company with a credit card, expense and human resources data.

This reveals the hidden costs of business travel and off-channel spend, enabling travel managers to identify missed savings opportunities, improve compliance and increase organisations’ negotiating power with suppliers.

CWT Travel Consolidator’s data algorithms consolidate, standardise and clean up the data, saving travel managers the time and hassle of having to fix inaccuracies.

Having all their data on a single platform, with configurable dashboards and reporting capabilities, means travel programmes can be more efficiently managed with all card, travel and expense data integrated into one place.

Integrated data also provides valuable information on spending outside official channels such as flights and hotels booked on personal cards and poorly understood costs like airline seat selection charges, meals, laundry and incidentals.

CWT Travel Consolidator not only reveals these costs but also attaches them to the trips and travellers who incurred them.

To help travel managers get the most out of the tool, CWT has a team of 160 travel sourcing and optimisation consultants who can advise clients, enabling them to make sense of their data and make informed decisions to improve their travel programmes.