Gateway Travel Joins Carlson Wagonlit

Pennsylvania-based Gateway Travel Management, a privately held regional travel management company with business totaling $160 million in annual air volume, has been acquired by the Carlson Wagonlit Travel family of business-travel management organizations.

Gateway vice president and chief financial officer, Jim Harris, said, “We were attracted to CWT specifically because of the long-held respect we’ve had for the organization as a competitor.”

The 26-year-old agency, headed by Harris and president/chief executive officer Jim Pekins, will be adding more than 80 employees to the CWT roster, along with a client base primarily located in the Middle Atlantic and Midwestern U.S. states, which encompasses a business mix of corporate travel management, group movements and meetings, and leisure-travel services.

With the purchase of Gateway Travel Management, CWT not only expands its presence in the Pittsburgh area but also furthers its established growth strategy, which includes increased expansion in the small and medium enterprise (SME) market and targeted acquisitions, a process that has slowed markedly since the “boom” years of 2006-2008.

CWT is in more than 150 countries around the world. In 2009, sales volume for its wholly owned operations as well as joint ventures (a direction believed to be garnering considerable attention by the global organization’s growth strategists) totaled $21.4 billion.