Managing Director & Partner
Atlanta
Tom McCaleb has worked in a number of capacities for The Boston Consulting Group since 2008. He is a core member of the firm’s Consumer and Marketing, Sales & Pricing practice areas. Tom also co-leads the firm’s global work in travel technology, as well as BCG’s revenue management topic for travel, tourism, and transportation in North America.
Tom’s work in the Consumer practice has covered retail, restaurants, hotels and resorts, cruise lines, airlines, and other aspects of travel and tourism, as well as air cargo and grocery. During his time with the firm, Tom has worked with clients on pricing and promotional effectiveness, marketing, branding, pricing, sales, operations, and organization topics.
Recent examples of Tom’s client work include revenue management transformation for a European cruise line; pricing strategy for the Canadian and Japanese divisions of a global beverage retailer; and efforts to improve the commercial, operations, and technology functions, as well as design and launch a new brand, for a large global hotel company.
Prior to joining BCG, Tom was an active duty officer in the US Air Force for seven years, including tours of duty as an aircraft maintenance operations manager in Germany and a numerical analyst in Iraq.
Travel companies can move beyond ticket pricing to focus on new models for customer understanding and engagement.
As cautious consumers resume traveling after COVID-19, hotel companies need to understand how the pandemic has altered their preferences and behaviors.
Travel and tourism companies will need to generate revenue from scratch when the recovery comes. They should view that as an opportunity, not a threat.
Travel companies that fail to innovate will be reduced to commodity providers of hotel rooms and airplane seats.
Travel companies are rich in data and confront complexity daily—characteristics that play to AI’s strengths. But for AI to succeed, companies must do more than experiment.
BCG’s holistic, end-to-end approach to pricing and revenue management is a roadmap for travel and tourism companies to increase revenue by up to 10%.