Companies like ours began 2020 with optimism. A few weeks later the world turned on its head and business continuity processes were put in place. In less than 48 hours we rolled out 24/7 myCWT messaging to help travelers get home, and mobilized our workforce from 132 offices to work from home within four weeks.
It was a herculean effort that kicked off a series of impressive developments. Meet a few of the committed professionals across the organization who show that when nothing is sure, anything is possible.
Cultivate resilience as a team
Francesca Rigamonti - Events Operations Innovator
Francesca and her team helped two international sports federations to keep their events on track during the pandemic. Just one of these events represented 28,000 room nights, for 1,300 guests over 40 days, managed amidst the complexities of Covid protocol. At times it felt like a marathon.
Accepting they couldn’t achieve perfection in a high-pressure environment, they focused on the client’s goals and desired outcomes to help prioritize. Teams were organized to provide cover for the period of the event, and they came together as a team, “Learning to deliver a major event during a pandemic – a world-first no matter the industry or type of event – is no mean feat. When there’s no history and best practice to influence decision-making, rules change by the minute, decisions get postponed, and time compresses. What normally takes a month, you might have to pull off in a week.”
Help others succeed
Kathy Voss, Traveler Experience Innovator
Hundreds of thousands of airline tickets went unused as travel more or less stopped during lockdowns. Airlines, travel companies and clients were overwhelmed with the sheer volume of travel cancellations and amendments. Seeing an opportunity to make it easy to use the relating travel credit or unused tickets, Kathy’s team reviewed and made available over 575,000 unused tickets in our unused ticket management tool, so that when travel picks up, the ticket value can be realized against a new booking.
Looking for innovative ways to improve service and benefits, helps clients through tough times.
Get value from everything you do
Jenine Wong - Savings Innovator
Jenine Wong brings product innovation to life. Connecting teams, she manages a diverse program of work across CWT product strategy and operations, blending the best of people and technology to deliver the value of price optimization to thousands of clients.
During hard times, companies prioritized savings more than ever. Jenine thinks it’s critical to think beyond cost-cutting, “Don’t just trim around the edges; get value from everything you do. With a travel return on investment approach, CWT offers a suite of tools and processes that can deliver measurable savings for your program—empowering clients to go beyond pure cost-cutting measures to embrace how travel affects employees. We help to deliver real ROI through pre- and post-ticketing savings, powerful insights, and supplier and third-party expertise. Uncertain times call for seeing the bigger picture.
Simplify complexities
Eilon Carmi - Messaging Innovator
During times of uncertainty, traveling employees need channels of communication and tools that mirror those used in their day-to-day.
As a CWT product director for over 8 years, Eilon’s focus is to build consumer grade products that traveling employees will want to use. myCWT, our award-winning app, is only part of the story; he’s shaping our myCWT platform and related service channels – web, mobile, messaging - to deliver the services employees expect from a travel program.
Read more about navigating change and the people who power CWT.