Amex rolled out its online reservation portal, RezPort, to the Australian market in May and will introduce its high-end product Corporate Travel Online (CTO) at the end of October.
-This is the product that will differentiate us in this market," Gouranga Dhanagare, e-commerce manager Amex Asia Pacific, told ZDNet Australia.
Dhanagare explained that unlike RezPort, which targets medium to large corporate clients within one country, CTO is a global solution targeted at multinational customers.
Whereas RezPort allows corporate customers to book airline flights, car rentals and hotels online, CTO offers additional functionality, allowing clients access to a preferred global hotel database and giving them increased control over hotel bookings, for instance.
For larger customers CTO also offers greater customisation, including the option of setting the company's travel policy as a tool and setting up preferred vendor lists, from which clients would like to get maximum mileage. CTO also allows clients to choose hotel preferences down to the exact property location, such as the Sheridan on Elizabeth Street, Sydney as opposed to the Sheridan at Sydney airport.
CTO also has some add-on features, including a mass-enrolment functionality and expense management feeds - exporting data to expense management feeds.
Singaporean corporates, which were introduced to RezPort just last week, can expect savings of up to 60 percent on transaction processing fees when they use the facility. However, in Australia 70-80 percent of travel is on a domestic level and therefore easier to process than it is in Singapore, which doesn't cater for domestic travel routes. Therefore, on an aggregated basis, corporate clients can expect to see savings of between 20 to 40 percent on transaction processing costs, according to Dhanagare.
As different travel markets have different readiness levels to accept new products, Singapore won't see CTO until sometime next year, Dhanagare explained. -Australia already has exposure to Internet travel based products."
Dependent upon the amount of customisation clients desire, implementation costs will be around the AU$10,000 - AU$20,000 mark.
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