Carlson Wagonlit creates the first private hotel review site for companies and corporate travel managers

Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) has created the first* private hotel review site for managed travel programs. [SEE UPDATE, BELOW}

Called CWT Hotel Intel, the tool is powered by Vinivi, a Parisian travel-review company.

The tool lets business travelers post hotel ratings that only their peers can see, and it provides travel managers a source of feedback exclusively on company-compliant properties near corporate offices.

Here’s how it works: After completing a trip, a traveler receives an email alert prompting him or her to comment on their hotel stay.

The reviews can help encourage future travelers to stay at their company’s preferred properties. When business travelers plan their trips, they can use the portal to see which hotels have been recommended by colleagues, if the hotel has a vacancy, and which services are included within the negotiated rate.

Case in point: L’Oreal, the cosmetics conglomerate, has been testing the service for the past six months with more than 550 hotels rated by its 25,000 business travelers. The company says that its employees have embraced the tool and that use of approved hotels has increased.

See a promotional video about the project, featuring L’Oreal’s travel managers who are très French:

UDPATE 15 November: Whether this is an industry “first” or not depends on how you define your terms. For the record, HRG (Hogg Robinson Group), has offered an internal hotel review micro-site that allows travellers to see their colleagues’ perceptions of hotels to help them make more informed decisions for several months now.

Meanwhile, since 2010, HRS (Hotel Reservation Service), the hotel booking portal, has allowed guests who have stayed at a hotel to submit an evaluation via the HRS portal and the more than 3 million responses to date are curated on its system for users to see.

CWT would point out that its system is unique for being tailored for individual companies, so that only the employees of a company can see property reviews from fellow employees, plus some other customisation tools.

I regret not being clearer when first reporting this item.