Afoofa is urging travel management companies to subscribe to its Instant Travel Portal (ITP), especially if they deal with medium and small-scale companies.

It says the portal can help these clients achieve better air fares and hotel room deals, and have access to reports.

ITP's two components - Flight Platform and Hotel Platform - are private-fare engines built around the Asian net fares marketplace for travel agencies. As they are web-based systems, both platforms enable travel management companies (TMCs) to distribute and market the negotiated air fares and hotel room rates, with an appropriate markup, to their corporate customers via the Internet.

ITP will enable company staff to check online fares,availability of seats and make reservations on a 24-hour basis on their TMC's website. It also provides return instant confirmation on reservation.

Asia Travel Network's assistant sales manager, Mr Damien Low, said: “ITP is best suited for medium and small-scale companies which have not negotiated contract rates with hotels and where bookings are done by department secretaries. TMCs can set up individual accounts for each company on their websites with an automated markup process so that the customer with the larger volume will get a lower markup on the negotiated fares.

“ITP can also ensure a company's request goes to the dedicated people who serve the account, thereby increasing the efficiency of the TMC.”

Smaller companies alsostand to gain from ITP's report generating facilities. “Sales can be tracked with `on-demand' online reports, including who are the top spenders, and customer profiles can be stored, accessed and edited when required,” Mr Low said.

This would facilitate greater e-customer relationship management by the TMC.

ITP's advantage to TMCs was that they would not have to develop special websites to offer these facilities, Mr Low said. As Flight Platform is a ready-made application, it can be generated within 24 hours, by activating the reservation link to ITP's website (www.instanttravelportal.com).

TMCs without a B2C website can obtain and enjoy the benefits of an instant travel portal immediately.

“As it is a non-proprietary system, it is very affordable,” Mr Low said.

Additional features being incorporated into ITP such as wait-listing and cancellation will be ready by mid-year.

The Car (Rental) Platform should be ready by the fourth quarter of this year.