Subject: Meeting The Mets: MLB Organization Convinced Travel Leaders To Embrace
NuTravel
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Meeting The Mets: MLB Organization Convinced Travel Leaders To Embrace NuTravel
The Beat ~ a travel business newsletter
4/25/11 2:39 PM EDT
Last summer, Travel Leaders Corporate made nuTravel's CTS its preferred online booking tool for
small and medium-size clients. It did so after the New York Mets, a client of both, insisted the TMC
begin offering the system.
Mets travelers typically are scouts, front-office employees, trainers and some players--like those being
called up from the minor leagues. The organization annually spends roughly $1.4 million on air travel.
In 2004, it consolidated its travel program from 30 separate travel agencies to one, Navigant
International. After Carlson Wagonlit Travel acquired Navigant, the Mets, with less than 3,000
transactions per year, felt like a small fish among CWT's corporate accounts, said Mets senior director
of corporate procurement William Hatzichristos. That ultimately led to the decision to hire Travel
Leaders Corporate, a switch that occurred last May.
Meanwhile, the Mets' previous online booking tools--TRX's ResX, managed by Navigant, and later
Concur's Cliqbook, managed by CWT--each failed to gain much traction among the organization's
travelers. ResX at the time "didn't fit" the Mets' needs and Cliqbook was too sophisticated, with many
features that "businesses of our size will never utilize," Hatzichristos explained. "Being a baseball team,
we are not pumping tens of thousands of transactions through a month or a year--we do far less. The
tool just was not for us."
Eyeing greater online adoption, Hatzichristos sought a tool independent of TMC suggestions. "Usually
when people hire travel management companies, they say, 'What online booking tools can you
provide?' And the usual suspects come up," he said. "Well, none of those worked for us, so we went out
and found nuTravel." The Mets began using that tool last August.
Travel Leaders Corporate took the hint. "As you run into situations with clients, sometimes they have a
preference toward one tool," said president David Holyoke. "Some clients want to understand the
market leaders, and what are the tools that you are bringing to the table, and what are your
recommendations. Bill [Hatzichristos] had an affinity for the nuTravel product and we weren't a reseller
at the time, and nuTravel does not do direct agreements with customers. We weighed the benefits of the
system and the value of the New York Mets to us and ultimately made the decision to move forward
with the product. We are putting the product to other use within our business. It complements existing
relationships that we have with Rearden [Commerce] and Concur today."
The Mets' online adoption rate went to 25 percent with nuTravel from about 2 percent with ResX and
Cliqbook, an increase that "was almost instantaneous," Hatzichristos said.
Knowing The Game
Hatzichristos also praised Travel Leaders for its understanding of his organization's profile and needs.
"We have the same set of agents who answer the call and who understand not only travel, but also
baseball," he said. "It's a very unique set of requirements that a lot of travel management companies
don't understand if they've never done it before. And there are only a few travel management
companies out there that would dare to tackle the professional sports area."
Because some travel is extremely time-sensitive, a high-touch service provider is needed. "It's missioncritical for us that when a player gets called up [from a minor league affiliate], we need to get them to
New York or to anywhere else at a moment's notice," Hatzichristos said. "It could be 2:00 a.m. and we
need to get them up to New York to possibly play the next game. Everyone is on call to support that
group of people. Once they're up in the air, then we track them and make sure they get to the ballpark
on time and safely.
"On the scouting side, on occasion they need to go from place to place at a moments notice, as well,"
Hatzichristos continued. "It's not as critical as a player move but certainly if [a scout] is sitting
somewhere at a college on the bleachers and he needs to book a flight or change a flight, he needs to
get out and move on to the next city to find that next prospect."
Travel Leaders also powers the Mets' company travel portal, which provides advisories and other
program information. The organization plans to use Travel Leaders' Beacon flight monitoring system to
push traveler notifications on schedule disruptions and flight cancellations through voicemail or text
messages. According to Holyoke, after a Beacon enhancement this summer, travelers experiencing
flight disruptions will receive on their mobile devices revised itinerary options that they can accept or
reject. "They will choose the one that they want," he explained, "and they will go through reaccommodation by the agent."
~ Lauren Darson
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