KUALA LUMPUR: A one-stop travel alliance for corporate travel aimed at reducing travelling costs has been set up in Asia.

The Corporate Travel Alliance (CTA), a grouping of 10 travel agencies from Asia, believes it has the reach, experience and expertise, and is able to share resources, systems and operations that can help their clients save travelling costs. The range of savings can be anything from 10% to 35%.

"Ours is a one-stop corporate travel alliance involving 10 travel agents and each can leverage on the partner's strength to save costs and widen its reach," said CTA director, partner relations, Benjamin Christen.

Corporate travel is starting to creep back to pre-economic crisis levels even though the latest figures released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) point to a slight decline in air passenger traffic in August.

But the alliance members are of the view that demand for air travel will remain strong, especially in Asia, and corporate travel will continue to grow.

IATA said on Monday that high load factors were beginning to lose altitude.

Having reached all-time highs earlier this year, there had been a slippage of around 1.5% and, in August 2010, loads were no better than that seen in the same month in 2007, the previous peak, it said.

The slowdown in demand in August was consistent with its forecast for a tougher end to 2010 as government stimulus monies would run out without having generated significant improvements in employment, it added.

But more and more companies are getting their executives back to travel, upgrading them from economy to business and that is the market CTA is after besides managing travel arrangements for conferences and events.

The CTA members are from Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. Its headquarters is in Singapore. Since it is an alliance a company will be formed to legalise the entity.

Although set up only in April, its members have been in the business for more than two decades with a combined sales of about US$1bil.

Its partner in Malaysia, Cor-porate Information Travel Sdn Bhd (CIT), has seen a 10% growth in business since joining the alliance.

"As an individual company we have been in the travel business for a long time but with the alliance we are looking at a 10% to 30% growth in our business each year," said CIT managing director Thaddeus Foo.

He said the alliance was able to give the agency the support system to manage travel beyond its borders and "it is all about providing a new experience in travelling where quality is assured since we have partners in all the different countries that are familiar to the local culture and conditions."

There are several travel alliances in the world but CTA has claimed to be the biggest in Asia. The alliance will expand its reach into China, India, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East. Most of the 10 countries are represented by one member each in the alliance but, for vast countries like China and India, there may be more.

The alliance may be a platform to save costs for its members but the agencies will have to compete with airlines that have their own units for corporate sales and also online booking.

"We are not competing with the airlines but complementing them. Similarly, many more corporations prefer to use travel agents rather than go online. In any case, the market is big," said Christen.

- The Star Online