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Exploring the Past, Present & Future of Workforce Travel

Jun 20, 2024

LodgeLink CEO Trevor Haynes joins the dojo.live podcast

In the ever-evolving landscape of workforce mobility, innovative solutions are crucial to efficiently managing the complex logistics of large-scale projects. This was the theme for a recent episode of the dojo.live podcast, where hosts Kim Landis and America Guerrero had an in-depth conversation with LodgeLink CEO Trevor Haynes.

Drawing on Trevor's extensive background, the three discussed LodgeLink’s past, present and future, the company’s approach to remote workforce accommodation and transportation solutions and the mission to revolutionize the mobilization of workforce crews.

CEO "Transforming Workforce Travel" dojo live interview.

Modest Beginnings to Market Disruption

“I think LodgeLink is a continuation of sort of a long interest in business,” said Haynes, who said the roots of LodgeLink reside within its parent company, Black Diamond Group.

Since launching on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2006, Black Diamond Group now has built a platform which today has 17,500 modular buildings in Canada, the United States and Australia.

“We grew very quickly,” Haynes said of the company’s early days.

The origins of LodgeLink itself reside in a 2016 business trip in Australia, where Haynes and his team encountered a travel coordinator manually matching work crews with lodgings. This inspired the team to leverage years of workforce travel expertise to conceive LodgeLink for streamlined travel management.

Understanding Customer Needs

“One of the questions that our customers continue to ask us is would you help us with the full travel management cycle,” says Haynes. “So you've got all this complication of itineraries, planes, buses, matching up with hotels, workforce camps, everything in there, along with how do we verify for payment? How do we reconcile and how do we track costs?”

How does LodgeLink answer those questions for our 500+ customers?

“We understand the customer very well. We understand the type of traveler. We understand where they're going to,” says Haynes, emphasizing the importance recognizing the unique needs of those crews out in the field, those responsible for getting them there and the environments and conditions they’re both working in.

Two people wearing safety vests and helmets in front of LodgeLink's room schedule page.

“We serve customers and so it's got to be about people, but also about performance. We want to meet the grade in terms of what we promised we'd be able to achieve. We're intent on achieving it for you, so you couple those together and somewhere in there you sort of get the magic exponent of when good people in a good culture - great outcomes. So we're focused on trying to do just that.”

“At the end of a long day you don't want to be standing in a hotel lobby because the reservation wasn't done properly. You want to get to your room. You want to get to something to eat.”

Beyond a platform that has been uniquely engineered to solve the problems of workforce travel, Haynes says one of the other big advantages of becoming a LodgeLink customer is the team that’s available to them when they have additional questions or needs.

“We're trying to make the tools as intuitive as possible and work with our customers and the booking managers so that they can, for the most part, look after their own requirements, but we have a team 24/7 who can deal with problems or complicated transactions that our customers need to make,” says Haynes.

The combination of an innovative intuitive platform with top-notch customer service is one that has allowed LodgeLink to become the fastest-growing ecosystem in a market that Haynes estimates to be around $70 billion a year in North America alone.

The Keys for Success

In 2023, LodgeLink’s net revenue grew 48% from the prior year.

“We've been growing close to 70% per year on a net revenue basis,” says Haynes of LodgeLink’s expansion. “And we think in terms of the size of the market, certainly there's room for us to continue to grow at a very fast clip.”

An integral part of that growth, says Haynes, has been the ability for LodgeLink to attract an enthusiastic team dedicated to LodgeLink’s core values.

“Values aren't just what you write on the wall. Values are how you behave, and culture is an outcome,” says Haynes.

“You get the culture you deserve, but if you behave according to those values that you think are important - for your customer and for attracting the best people - you will find yourself surrounded by talented people who are excited about the mission you're on and willing to help do the work. I would say that's the secret sauce of LodgeLink and what's going to make it immensely successful in the future, so we're focused on trying to do just that.”