A new Bermuda company offering cut-price business travel, Global Business Pass, was launched this week on the Island and promises to slash the expense of travel for small to medium-sized firms.

Management of the company say that they can offer small and mid-sized companies the same deals on air fares that are currently only available to large conglomerates.

?No one sells travel except to the very large corporation,? said John Bintliff, chairman and chief executive officer of the company. ?We are selling to all sizes of corporation, small and large, and companies realise that they can buy fares at the same price as a massive conglomerate.?

Mr. Bintliff has gone into partnership with Tony Forster, who he has known for 10 years and the pair, who both have long careers in marketing, have been working on turning their idea into reality for three years now.

Both men have a marketing background and saw a huge hole in the market for reasonable priced business travel. They pointed out that business travel costs have gone up 25 percent in the past five years, despite carriers hunting down cut price normal travellers and offering deals to large corporations, normal businesses were landed with large air fairs. Now they have struck up a deal with Delta and its affiliates at Air France and AirItalia, which knocks about 50 percent off the cost of business travel. They claim that a ?4,000 round trip ticket from London to New York will now cost ?2,000, saving the company 50 percent of the cost. The deal is companies buy blocks of $55,000 travel vouchers which can be used up until 2009, and company guarantees the cost of travel stays the same over the next five years.

?Travel is one of the most controllable items on an expense list,? said Mr. Bintliff. ?All we hear about is low cost travel, but in fact business fares have been rising steadily over the years.?

And the company, which is owned by parent company Royal Ocean Corporation Ltd., a group of mainly Bermuda investors, hopes that its offer of cheap air fares will entice companies to sign up with them for their business travel. ?Companies have been very keen to sign up so far,? said Mr. Forster, who is a well-known businessman in Bermuda with his own merchant bank company Britannia International. ?We start selling from March 1, and launched last week in England and today (Wednesday) in Bermuda.?

The pass will also offer access to Marriott Hotels in 65 countries, and both air and hotels can be booked on-line at the click of a button. The company currently has a sales force of 10 in England covering Manchester and London, and two in Bermuda offering customers service.

?That of course will grow as the company grows,? said Mr. Forster. ?The Bermuda staff have to get up very early - and start work at about 4am to keep up with European hours.?

Mr. Forster said that if the venture is a success, it may eventually go public, and would most likely launch initially on the Bermuda Stock Exchange. ?But that is all a bit premature at the moment,? he added.