Is CWT Your Best Option for T&E Management? Here’s an Honest Review

CWT (formerly Carlson Wagonlit Travel) is one of the longest-standing names in managed corporate travel. Today, the company describes itself as a global B2B4E travel management platform that blends technology, analytics, and human support.

When companies rethink their travel management solutions, CWT often shows up on short lists alongside newer software-first platforms and all-in-one travel and expense solutions like Navan. With CWT becoming part of American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT), many teams are asking what will change across product, pricing, and service.

This review draws on CWT’s product materials, independent analyst roundups, app store feedback, and comparison articles that compile review-site scores. Because CWT has a limited presence on major SaaS review sites (around seven G2 reviews at the time of writing), we put more weight on:

• CWT’s own descriptions of myCWT, analytics, and inventory
• Third-party overviews that aggregate G2, Capterra data, and further ratings
• App Store reviews of the myCWT mobile app, which reflect traveler sentiment

Our goal is to give a clear, practical view of what CWT offers, how it’s priced, and when it’s a 

strong fit (or a mismatch) for modern travel and expense teams.

CWT Review: Capabilities, Costs, Strengths, and Customer Feedback

What Is CWT?

CWT is a global travel management company (TMC) that manages business travel, meetings, and events across six continents. It targets mid‑market and enterprise organizations, government entities, and NGOs that want a full‑service managed travel program rather than a pure self‑service booking tool.

Key components in the CWT stack include:

• myCWT platform: Consumer‑style web and mobile tools for booking flights, hotels, car rental, and rail, plus messaging with CWT counselors
• Analytics (CWT AnalytIQs): Cloud‑based reporting and dashboards for travel managers
• Traveler profile: A global profile system tied into booking channels and loyalty programs
• Payments: Centralized payment processes for hotels and some low‑cost carriers
• Risk and safety: Traveler tracking, alerts, and integration with providers such as International SOS
• Consulting and industry‑specific services: Specialist teams for sectors like life sciences, media, and energy

CWT emphasizes blending “advanced technology with human expertise” to optimize travel programs, manage risk, and support sustainability goals.

What are CWT’s features and modules?

What Does CWT Offer?

CWT’s business travel offering is anchored by the myCWT platform and its supporting services:

• Air: Access to GDS content and negotiated fares, available online via myCWT and offline via counselors; a “Best Time to Buy” indicator shows when fares are likely to rise.
• Rail: Booking for UK, France, and Spain via myCWT, including corporate fares, seat preferences, and e‑tickets; cancellations and changes handled via counselors.
• Hotel: Inventory from GDS and aggregators, with company‑preferred properties prioritized and rate‑tracking tools that can rebook when prices drop.
• Car rental: Shop, book, and cancel car rentals through myCWT in supported markets, with in‑/out‑of‑policy indicators and loyalty integration.

All CWT‑booked trips sync into the myCWT app and web portal, including trips booked through an online booking tool or offline through a counselor.

What Does CWT Offer?

CWT is fundamentally a travel‑first agency, not an expense or corporate card platform. Its core product pages say that it offers a “central payment process for travelers to easily pay for hotels and low‑cost carriers with increased security, reconciliation, and traveler compliance.”

However, CWT does not market a fully integrated expense automation and card stack comparable to modern travel and expense suites. As a result, organizations typically pair CWT with a separate expense management tool and card program.

What Does CWT Offer?

CWT’s policy controls are distributed and focus on guidance during the booking process. Enforcement mechanisms include:

• myCWT booking rules: Rules that flag out-of-policy items (e.g., fare types, hotel categories, car sizes).
• Visual indicators: Search results show clear examples — like preferred suppliers, labels for policies, and warnings — when properties exceed nightly cost allowances.
• Program messenger: A tool to send policy-driven communications to travelers at defined moments.

Approvals themselves are typically handled outside the myCWT platform, in the customer’s chosen online booking tool (OBT) or expense management system.

What Does CWT Offer?

CWT markets its analytics/AnalytIQs platform as a cloud-based intelligence and reporting solution designed for travel managers. Key capabilities include:

• Consolidated spend data: Aggregates air, hotel, and ground spend in real time
• Visualization: Provides visualization of travel patterns, compliance rates, and savings opportunities
• AI-powered insights: Uses AI to scan bookings, traveler locations, pricing trends, and emissions data to support real-time decisions and supplier negotiations
• Risk support: Feeds traveler tracking data into risk reporting tools

What Does CWT Offer?

CWT’s risk management tools are tightly integrated with all channels (OBT, myCWT, agent bookings) and include:

• Traveler tracking: All bookings feed into a central traveler tracking system for real-time location visibility.
• Alerts and integration: Itinerary-specific safety and security alerts are delivered via the app/web. The solution integrates with third-party providers like International SOS for destination intelligence and check-in capabilities.

What Does CWT Offer?

CWT adds a vital messaging layer on top of its core channels:

• 24/7 counselor access: Travelers can message CWT counselors via the myCWT app/web 24 hours a day.
• Multi-channel support: Messaging is also supported via popular platforms like WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, and Slack for participating clients.
• System integration: CWT integrates with corporate calendar systems (for trip sync), external safety providers, and online booking tools.

What Does CWT Offer?

The myCWT app, pitched as the “digital gateway” to the client’s travel program, is available on smartphones and tablets. Key capabilities include:

• Full booking: Book, modify, and cancel flights, hotels, car rentals, and train trips (where supported).
• Trip management: Sync itineraries with device calendars, import meetings, check in for flights (250+ airlines supported), and use a Travel Arranger dashboard.
• Alerts and chat: Get flight status/safety alerts plus access to 24/7 counselor chat.
• Sustainability: Display carbon emissions indicators for flights/hotels/cars.

Overall Ratings: The Social Proof

CWT appears sparsely on mainstream SaaS review platforms, reflecting its model as a service-first TMC rather than a pure-play travel and expense software provider. Independent comparisons often rely on limited data pools.

Ease of Use: Service vs. Software

The clearest user sentiment comes from App Store comments and analyst summaries regarding the myCWT platform. The theme is one of functional, mature technology that supports a high-touch service model.

Praise:

• Reviewers call the myCWT mobile platform a “nice app with a few quirks” and “your business travel companion – plan, book, manage and track your travel."
• Analyst summaries suggest that SMBs “get a mature booking and servicing engine without having to build a heavy program from scratch.”

Friction:

• Users cite technical issues with app functionality, such as the calendar sync not working.
• The platform is often described by analysts as functional but more traditional compared with newer, software-native competitors.
• Users have expressed a desire for “better control over the notifications the application pushes.”

Functionality and Feature Depth

CWT’s strength lies in its broad global servicing footprint and high-touch model, where the platform serves as an interface for comprehensive travel management rather than a standalone self-service tool.

Praise:

• Characterized as a “well-known global TMC serving thousands of corporate clients with an emphasis on technology plus human service.”
• The model offers the “myCWT web and mobile platform with integrated agent support.”

Friction:

• The core functionality focuses  on travel booking and management, and its depth is intrinsically tied to the TMC’s service offerings, which may be less suitable for teams prioritizing pure, independent software-driven features.

Support and Implementation Feedback

CWT operates on an explicitly high-touch model centered on human support, including 24/7 access to counselors, regional support lines, and messaging. This contrasts with software models that rely primarily on ticketing systems.

Praise:

• The model is characterized by “broad global servicing footprint” and access to dedicated agents.
• Support is “24/7” via phone and regional support lines.

Friction:

• App Store feedback includes complaints from users about policies that “push them to call their 1-800 number” for changes, which can sometimes incur surcharges.
• The potential to incur these transaction-based fees (whether TMC fees or client-specific contract charges) is a recurring theme in comments about traditional TMC models.

Pricing Transparency and Value

CWT does not publish list pricing, as its cost is fundamentally tied to the scope of a custom-negotiated service contract, not a fixed software subscription.

Opacity: Pricing is “subscription-based ... depending on the scope of services,” and getting a quote requires direct contact with the CWT team.

Model: The total cost is a function of company size, annual spend, markets covered, and the mix of offline agent use vs. digital channels, including potential surcharges for after-hours or complex changes.

Value: The value proposition is centered on global scale, human support, and mature, end-to-end program management — a fit for large enterprises prioritizing full-service reliability over low-cost software subscriptions.

The Cost of CWT: Public Facts and Figures

Because CWT does not publish a standard price card, its cost structure can only be described using credible third-party sources. Pricing is quote-based, highly customized, and dependent on the overall scope of the travel management agreement. Travel services commonly include transactional fees, which form a significant part of the cost.

Unlike platforms with fixed software fees, CWT’s total cost is fundamentally shaped by a company’s profile and service requirements, including:

• Scale and travel volume: The company’s size and total annual travel spend
• Service model: The number of markets served and the required support model (e.g., local, regional, global)
• Channel mix: The blend of offline agent support versus digital channels, such as the myCWT mobile app
• Contract scope: Additional services, such as meetings and events management, consulting, or advanced analytics

Negotiations for traditional travel management contracts typically cover both stated transaction fees and potential “shadow costs,” such as fees for agent-handled changes or after-hours support. For budgeting, buyers often use analyst benchmarks and peer networks to understand the true cost structure.

Overall, CWT is priced like a traditional enterprise service contract. While this can be a good fit for large organizations that require extensive, custom-configured global support, it is often misaligned with the needs of leaner teams seeking the transparent and predictable pricing of modern SaaS models based on seats or usage.

What Are the Pros of CWT?

✅ Global Coverage and Experience

Operating across six continents, CWT has 150 years of industry history serving “companies of all sizes, governmental institutions, and non-governmental organizations.” For organizations with distributed workforces and complex travel patterns, that massive global scale and deep experience can be highly reassuring, reinforcing its position as a global leader.

✅ Omni-channel myCWT Platform

The myCWT platform brings together web, mobile, and human counselor channels, giving travelers a single, convenient interface for bookings and changes while consistently feeding data back to managers. CWT describes this as a “consumer-grade travel platform” that allows booking across all channels, including via dedicated travel counselors.

✅ Strong Risk Management and Duty-of-Care Capabilities

CWT’s system is built for compliance and safety, feeding all bookings into traveler tracking and offering safety alerts tied to itineraries, along with key integrations with providers like International SOS. As CWT states, “Safety and security alerts based on your booked itinerary are available on both mobile and web.”

✅ Analytics and AI-Driven Insights

The AnalytIQs and analytics tools provide near-real-time reporting capabilities, with CWT leveraging AI to spot booking trends, fare fluctuations, and emissions patterns. This helps travel managers make data-backed decisions and improve their response to global events, as “CWT’s AI-powered analytics are transforming how travel managers respond to global change.”

✅ Sector-Specific Expertise

CWT maintains specialist teams for complex verticals like life sciences, media and entertainment, and energy/resource/marine sectors, among others. Enterprises with complex crew logistics, production schedules, or regulatory needs can leverage this valuable, deep domain knowledge.

✅ Rich Travel Inventory

CWT aggregates extensive GDS content, direct airline content, and hotel inventory, actively negotiating preferential rates globally. Additionally, it supports rail booking in key European markets and provides optimization tools for airfare and hotel pricing.

✅ Travel Arranger and Admin Features

The dedicated Travel Arranger dashboard is a key feature that allows executive assistants and office managers to easily monitor multiple travelers, set favorites, and book or cancel trips on their behalf, which is crucial for centralized coordination of executive and team travel.

What Are the Cons of CWT?

❌ Limited Public SaaS-Style Feedback

With only a handful of G2 reviews and no significant presence on Capterra or TrustRadius, there simply isn’t a large, transparent body of online feedback, unlike modern software platforms that have thousands of reviews. This makes benchmarking user satisfaction and overall UX much harder compared to newer travel and expense management platforms.

❌ Separate Travel vs. Expense and Card Stack

CWT is fundamentally travel-focused, meaning customers typically need to layer in a separate expense system and corporate card provider to achieve full automation, policy-driven card controls, and real-time transaction coding. This fragmentation forces companies to manage separate vendors and integrations, leading to reduced visibility and more manual reconciliation work.

❌ Opaque, Negotiated Pricing

Because no public per-trip or per-user price exists, buyers must obtain a custom quote. This model is often associated with potential surcharges for after-hours service, changes, or agent support — a common structural feature of legacy TMC contracts. The lack of transparency can make pricing harder to evaluate and compare against clear, SaaS-style per-seat fees.

❌ Variable Digital Experience and Features by Market

The myCWT FAQ explicitly warns that “not all features are available in all devices or all countries,” and key capabilities — like hotel, car, rail booking, or messaging — are often “turned off by default” and must be enabled per client. This configuration dependence can result in uneven or inconsistent traveler experiences across different regions and user groups.

❌ App and UX Friction Points

The mobile experience, while functional, still exhibits friction pointsApp Store reviewers cite technical issues and UX gaps, such as calendar sync problems or the inability to change or cancel a reservation directly through the app. These issues surface the reality that CWT is still evolving its mobile UX and self-service depth to meet consumer-grade expectations.

❌ Industry Consolidation and Roadmap Uncertainty

The acquisition of CWT by American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) in 2024 introduces roadmap uncertainty. While the acquisition may bring new synergies, analyst reports suggest that prospective customers should conduct diligence and inquire about long-term product plans, support continuity, and integration timelines as the combined entity evolves.

When Is CWT a Good Fit?

You Need a Full-Service, Global TMC

If your organization values a traditional managed travel program complete with counselors, regional service centers, and global policy oversight, especially for multi-continent operations, CWT’s extensive global footprint and experience are a strong match.

Risk Management and Safety Are Central

Companies with high duty-of-care standards, frequent trips to higher-risk regions, or strict crisis-management requirements benefit from CWT’s integrated tracking, safety alerts, and established partners like International SOS.

You’re Comfortable With a Multi-Vendor Travel and Expense Stack

If you already have an established expense management system and corporate cards in place and are looking only for a travel agency solution plus front-end booking tools, CWT can easily slot into that existing, multi-vendor architecture.

Industry-Specific Travel Complexity

Organizations in sectors like life sciences, energy, or media that require specialized travel arrangements — such as crew changeovers, project site logistics, or production schedules — can leverage the deep domain knowledge of CWT’s sector-specific teams.

You Value Human Agents Backed by Technology

If your traveler base routinely needs complex, last-minute changes that are best handled by experienced agents, CWT’s counselor model — which offers 24/7 chat and phone support — may be highly attractive.

When Is CWT Not an Ideal Fit?

You Want a Single, Unified Solution for Travel Management, Corporate Cards, and Expense Management

Modern travel and expense strategies increasingly look for a single platform that unifies travel booking, corporate cards, and expense management with real-time policy controls. Because CWT is travel-only, you’ll still have to manage separate vendors and integrations for spend management and expense automation.

You Prioritize Transparent, SaaS-Style Pricing

If your organization prefers per-user or per-trip SaaS pricing that’s published on a website and minimal surcharges, CWT’s opaque, contract-based fees may be harder to evaluate and compare.

You Want a Strong Self-Serve Mobile UX Above All

If adoption hinges on a consumer-grade, app-first experience with maximum self-service and minimal reliance on agents, you may find traditional TMC tooling less aligned with that expectation. While myCWT is functional and evolving, some reviewers note friction with features like calendar sync, notifications, and online change/cancel flows.

You’re a Smaller Business With Limited Travel Complexity

If you are a smaller business or mid-market company with limited travel complexity, yuo may find that lighter-weight, software-first platforms with simpler onboarding and lower minimums are a better fit. Analyst comparisons often position CWT as more aligned with mid-market and enterprise needs.

Considering a Modern Travel and Expense Platform? Discover Why Teams Choose Navan

As the travel and expense landscape evolves, many companies are moving away from fragmented stacks of separate travel agencies, booking tools, card programs, and expense systems. Analysts note a growing preference for unified, software‑driven platforms that consolidate travel booking, card issuance, and expense automation under one roof.

Navan is an example of this structural shift:

Unified Travel, Corporate Cards, and Expense in One System

Navan is a comprehensive platform that offers booking capabilities for flights, hotels, trains, cars, and more, with integrated corporate cards and automated expense workflows all consolidated into a single system. For instance, Relayr, a global IoT company, explicitly chose Navan because of this unified model, having previously struggled with a disjointed travel and expense solution that negatively impacted both user experience and overall visibility.

Real‑Time Controls Instead of After‑the‑Fact Policing

Navan’s card and expense stack allows companies to encode policy on the card and at the point of transaction. Users and reviewers report that Navan can “automatically code transactions and enforce expense policies,” effectively eliminating the need for traditional expense reports in many scenarios.

Consumer‑Grade UX and High Adoption

The platform’s mobile and web interfaces are designed to feel like consumer travel apps, which drives adoption and keeps travelers inside the approved solution. Relayr reports over 95% employee adoption of Navan Expense and 98% compliance with its max‑price policy.

Transparent, Software‑Centric Delivery

Navan positions itself as a modern alternative to traditional agencies, with G2 users ranking it the No. 1 solution overall for travel and expense management in multiple quarters. Companies can use Navan cards, link existing Visa/Mastercard/Amex corporate cards via Navan Connect, or rely on fast reimbursements for out‑of‑pocket spend.

Global Scalability and 24/7 Support

Navan supports multinational organizations with global inventory, local currencies, and always‑on traveler assistance via chat or phone.

For teams that recognize both the strengths and structural limitations of a traditional travel management company like CWT (particularly the separation between travel and spend management, opaque pricing, and variable digital UX), exploring a unified platform can be a logical next step.

 Conclusion: Re-evaluating the T&E Status Quo

This deep dive into CWT reveals a solution that is globally scaled, counselor-backed, and rich in high-touch services, cementing its role as a leading traditional travel management company. Its core strengths lie in providing full-service travel, robust duty of care capabilities, global infrastructure, and specialized expertise for complex corporate sectors. For large, multi-national organizations that prioritize human support and agent-assisted bookings over self-service technology, CWT remains a strong, defensible choice.

However, the analysis also highlights the structural tradeoffs of the traditional TMC model:

• Fragmentation: CWT is a travel-first solution; it requires customers to pair it with separate corporate card and expense management platforms. This fragments the travel and expense workflow, leading to manual reconciliation and delayed visibility.
• Pricing opacity: Like many legacy TMCs, CWT’s reliance on custom quotes, negotiated contracts, and multi-component fees (including potential transaction surcharges) makes it difficult to benchmark against modern, transparent, per-seat or flat-fee SaaS pricing.
• UX gaps: While the myCWT platform is functional and evolving, user feedback on features like online change/cancellation flows and mobile reliability suggests that the digital experience is often not on par with consumer-grade software.

The market is rapidly shifting toward unified platforms that solve these problems by integrating travel booking, corporate card payment, and expense reconciliation into a single, software-first experience. Solutions like Navan embody this change by offering real-time policy control at the point of spend, simple pricing, and a modern UX that drives higher employee adoption.

For organizations that prioritize seamless integration, predictable SaaS costs, and a frictionless experience that reduces administrative overhead, re-evaluating the reliance on a fragmented, TMC-centric stack is essential. The choice today is often between an established, service-rich model built for maximum complexity and agent support (CWT) and a unified, agile solution built for maximum simplicity, real-time control, and user adoption (Navan).

If your team struggles with fragmented workflows, high administrative costs, or delayed spend visibility, the benefits of a modern, integrated travel and expense platform are worth exploring.

*Competitive data was collected as of January 8, 2026, and is subject to change or update.