Carlson Wagonlit Travel released an upgraded version of its proprietary Horizon online booking tool for corporate customers.
It said version 6.0 of the tool, deployed in North America, is designed to foster online bookings by providing a more interactive map-based hotel booking experience and incentives for preferred hotel bookings.
Other features are predictive searching, a group trip functionality and an overall redesigned look and feel, CWT said.
The mapping functionality enables clients to conduct hotel searches around preloaded company, customer and vendor locations at their destinations. If the client's trip is a one-off to a particular destination, the traveler can enter the relevant address -- such as for a conference -- and the mapping system will highlight convenient hotels.
The predictive search capability refers to giving preferred listing to previously booked hotels. In addition, travel managers can enable this function only for preferred suppliers.
For group travel, CWT said, department administrators can create a simple group template that then allows each traveler to book his or her trip online and within the outlined parameters.
As for incentivizing staff to book preferred hotels, CWT said the benefits are offered directly by the preferred provider, and those offers could be additional loyalty points, free breakfast or free Internet access.
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