Government Lodging Program: Trends and Activities

Tom began his career by buying a franchise of an improvisational comedy show and bringing it to Minneapolis.  He isn't funny, he just saw a business opportunity.  Needing an actual paycheck, he started working for a Fortune 500 company and got hooked on data and analytics.  He took a job with a large Minnesota Travel Management Company when they were forming their client consulting group and headed up their analytic modeling group.  He has spent the last 20 plus years helping companies and the government negotiate and travel in more efficient ways.  For a long time, Tom was a frequent speaker in travel forums and events and in 2011 was named 1 of the top 20 most influential people in the travel industry, largely for his work with Coca-Cola developing a travel scoring system that helped drive compliant behavior.  Tom consulted with the government since 2012 and became a federal employee in October 2021 working with the City Pair Program, FedRooms, and leading the market research component of ETSNext, the booking and expense platform currently out for bid.  He's excited to be here as one of his initiatives is exploring how we can utilize technologies such as small meetings registration tools to ensure that proper procurement processes are followed.