Business Travel News on Tuesday night at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas named PwC senior managers of U.S. procurement, business services and travel Danielle Cavnor and Eric Gray as its 2023 Travel Managers of the Year.
Cavnor and Gray were chosen by BTN editors from nominations submitted by the industry. This is the first time since BTN began naming Travel Managers of the Year in 1985 that two honorees from one company were named.
BTN editorial director Elizabeth West announced the winners along with BTN's three 2023 Travel Management Best Practitioners: Anne Hamilton of The Walt Disney Co., Rafael Rosario of Bloomberg LP, and Ian Spearing of EY.
Cavnor and Gray were presented by PwC US a challenge to "double the business travel experience" while simultaneously finding efficiencies and returning that value to the traveler side of the equation. The two leaders led an initiative that began with a blockchain-based experiment to book air travel directly with United Airlines, but with all transactions connected to and settled from a blockchain ledger, without incurring fees associated with credit card transactions. That experiment was declared a success in early 2019, but just as PwC US was ready to roll out a second-stage initiative the following year, Covid-19 shut travel down.
The pandemic, however, did not shut travel management innovation down for Cavor and Gray. They doubled down on defining the business travel experience by making fundamental changes to PwC US's corporate travel ecosystem. This ultimately included a deep partnership with Kayak for Business for an agile business travel booking tool and going all-in with blockchain-based corporate travel innovator BlockSkye to stand up an independent travel management company using Gant Travel platforms enhanced with their services to support a direct connect and blockchain strategy—not just for PwC, but also for other companies that may want to pursue a similar path.
The result is a travel program that pushes for radical transparency in managed travel along with a single source of data truth powered by blockchain technology. Through the Kayak for Business booking tool and the BlockSkye-powered TMC, PwC US is pushing all bookings and all itinerary "touches" to the blockchain, with each reservation entity along the chain sharing access to that immutable trip data. Travel suppliers and the TMC may service the bookings for suppliers that participate in direct connect. As of November 2022 when PwC fully launched the ecosystem to 65,000 U.S.-based travelers, the new ecosystem has supported more than 400,000 bookings with a 99.9 percent success rate.
"There is so much to this innovation story that hinges on PwC's total commitment to changing the business travel experience through internal and external partnership," said BTN's West. "As a result, and for the first time in the 39-year history of presenting the BTN Travel Manager of the Year Award, we recognize two team members whose work could not be separated from one another. Danielle and Eric's co-leadership on this initiative brought together a coalition of the willing to use leading-edge technology that has delivered radical data transparency and sharing capability into the service of the business travel experience. It has delivered that experience at scale to PwC travelers—and has set up not only a model but also has defined an ecosystem that other programs can use."
Best Practitioners
BTN on Tuesday also recognized its 2023 Best Practitioners. Each was awarded for excellence in a single practice within their overall program.
Anne Hamilton, Vice President of Global Travel & Expense Management, The Walt Disney Co.
BTN named The Walt Disney Co.'s Hamilton for her work to enable non-employee travel at a level equal to internal travel. In the process, Hamilton streamlined data collection and spend reconciliation to ease internal processes as well as expedite supplier payment.
Disney's intensive production work, which includes such areas as broadcast, news, studios, sports, digital entertainment and theme parks demands that the company tap a large pool of non-employee talent at locations around the world.
Hamilton and her team have leveraged Concur, Cvent and mobile payment with Grasp to join up travel and spend data to unique "event" identifiers to deliver full itinerary details to non-employees and facilitate onsite payment without relying on the guest traveler to front funds. The virtual payment strategy, which requires hotel partners to participate, connects that spend data to the unique "event" identifier, allowing Disney to lift the reconciliation burden from the internal team and to pay hotel partners in 15 days versus what previously could be a months-long process.
Rafael Rosario, Global Travel Manager, Bloomberg LP
BTN named Bloomberg LP's Rafael Rosario for his collaboration with the company's human resources and philanthropy organizations for creating a program that locks diversity, equity and inclusion into the business travel workflow.
Rosario has implemented a specialized, opt-in accessibility program that supports individual needs, from temporary or chronic health issues to physical and neurodiversity. The program is open to the company's more than 11,000 travelers who declare a need. It uses an encoded indicator that lives outside of the travel profile system to inform agents that a personal accommodation is required and guides parameters around what accommodation should be made.
Rosario has also created an internal business travel podcast for diversity, equity and inclusion in travel and has formalized within supplier contracts how Bloomberg travel partners support the company's philanthropic diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Ian Spearing, Global Innovation & Technology Leader, EY
BTN named EY's Ian Spearing for his work to scale how EY's travel program identifies, vets and implements travel tech startups in service of the EY managed program.
Using a "Shark Tank"-style pitch format, EY builds excitement around the program and has attracted innovators from around the globe. Together with EY's TMC partners the company goes out with "problem statement" and invites travel tech startups to pitch solutions to the company in live sessions—recently hosted in New York, London and some virtually in Asia—to drive a short list of potential partners.
Spearing's pitch process has netted solutions for the company across 66 potential partners, and EY has been able to solve for a number of problems they hadn't previously been able to address. The process has worked hand-in-hand with EY's existing ecosystem, resulting in collaborative innovation across the entire chain.
Check businesstravelnews.com on Aug. 21 for more details of the efforts of the 2023 Travel Manager of the Year and the 2023 Best Practitioners.