Corporate Travel Management

Corporate Travel Management (CTM) was founded 30 years ago in Charlotte, NC, and focuses on corporate travel, with a specialization in entertainment production travel. Current President Kelly Noftsger and her brother, Steven Taggart, CTM’s Director of Sales and Marketing, grew up in the travel business, learning about technology and personalized customer service from their parents who started the company.

“Two of our core values are to provide leading technology and outstanding service,” stated Noftsger. “We’re always interested in optimizing the travel experience for our clients by providing a better experience through technology, but never sacrificing the levels of service we’ve become so well known for.”

Attesting to its level of service, CTM’s film production specialty started through word of mouth following the first production it was referred for, the Showtime network program, “Homeland”. Entertainment is known for having extremely high-touch, high-service requirements, including managing last-minute changes for groups of travelers and accommodating VIPs.

“We have productions by Netflix, Fox, Showtime, HBO,” said Noftsger. “We’re available and accessible to travelers and studios, who have greater needs and more service issues than most corporate clients on nights and weekends.” She continued, “We provide true, white-glove service, not just for the entertainment industry but all our clients. We have all the technology the mega agencies have but we know our clients, it’s not just a slogan.”

Clients with CTM have a team of agents. There’s no call center experience for customers to get lost in; the client gets to know its agents and vice versa. The company typically responds to customers within minutes, versus hours or days — a noticeable difference from competitors with lower customer service models.

“And the opportunity to contact Kelly or myself gives us an advantage because there aren’t layers of management,” says Taggart. “We’re able to shine with our true dedication to the customer experience. It’s a very hands-on approach with our clients and our vendor partners, too.”

CTM has had a long relationship with one of the big travel and expense vendors, but company leaders have always kept an eye out for leading technology that could help their customers. Because of their interest in technology, Taggart has been familiar with Deem for a number of years. CTM is also a long-term partner of Enterprise Holdings, so the new agreement with Deem was a natural extension.

Said Taggart, “Our technology partners know we’re as dedicated to our vendors as much as we are to our clients. We want to make sure we work with people who align with our core values and how we are with our customers. I know when I introduce National or Enterprise to an organization, they’re in good hands. They’re getting not only the best rates but the customer service that mirrors the service and capabilities that we offer to our clients.”

Deem also shares CTM’s core values of providing leading technology and superior service. Deem’s implementation process is one example of this. “As far as agency onboarding, we had a gold-star experience,” said Noftsger. “It gives me confidence that I know when we bring a client on board, it doesn’t matter how complicated their travel policy or needs are because I know I’ve got great support at Deem. We know the team there is going to make sure everything is perfect.”

One feature that’s attractive to CTM about Deem is its primary focus on travel. Larger travel and expense companies tend to have a focus on many different products, with travel just a small piece of the overall offering. CTM recognized that Deem is a product that’s evolving just ahead of the industry — its core focus is on the development of a travel tool with multiple access points for different expense products that can be integrated.

“That opens up a broader base of opportunities for our clients to get a leading-edge, robust travel product with a different expense software,” said Noftsger. “[Deem has] more integrations than the legacy platforms that are currently out there. It will be quite valuable in our introduction to organizations that want to move away from a legacy solution to something that’s more evolved and adaptive to our current marketplace.”  

One of the bigger benefits of Deem for CTM’s customers is its robust mobile app. Deem empowers travelers to shop, book and manage their entire trip from wherever they are. Not all business travel mobile apps have the functionality of Deem.

“Current apps are very clunky, very limited, and not user friendly,” said Taggart. “I think because Deem has that mobile platform — and desktop as well — that’s very robust, it’s going to be huge for our travelers who are on the road. [Deem has] a lot of features that aren’t available in other products that are going to be attractive to many of our customers, and the mobile app is one of them.”

The CTM team is looking forward to travel starting to increase this year and to having more options to offer its clients as they start navigating business travel again. “We embrace technology and are passionate about providing service,” Noftsger concluded. “We’re passionate about what we do. We love this industry, and we love taking care of clients and assisting them.”

‍