Читать книгу Global Experience Industries - Jens Christensen - Страница 39

Together with American Express and BCD, American Carlson Wagonlit (CWT) constitutes the world’s three leading business travel agencies.⁶⁵ CWT is part of the larger Carlson Companies. Since the 1960s, and especially during the 1980s and 1990s, Carlson Companies expanded by several acquisitions in more and more parts of the tourism value chain, mainly in business travel. In 1997, when the Carlson Travel Group merged with French Accor’s Wagonlit Travel and formed Carlson Wagonlit Travel, it created the first truly global business travel agency with three thousand offices in one-hundred-and-fifty countries. Carlson Companies includes two other travel subsidiaries, Carlson Leisure Travel Services, including many travel agencies, tour operators and cruise lines, as well as Carlson Hotel Worldwide, for example the hotels of Radisson and Friday’s. The total travel business revenues of Carlson Companies amounted to $20 billion in 2007.