In a move intended to cut their costs and pool their resources, Meyer Travel and Franklin Travel will become Meyer-Franklin Travel, the agencies announced yesterday.

The two travel agencies will officially merge on October 1. By pooling their resources, they hope to improve service and increase expertise, making the booking fees introduced after airlines slashed their commissions in the late 1990s more worthwhile.

"(Agents) can say 'yeah, I've been there, I've stayed at that hotel, I've flown Lufthansa' and compare it to British Airways," said Patti Daly Franklin, the president of Franklin Travel who will become the president of the new company and will be responsible for its day-to-day operation.

With more agents, the company will be able to advise on more hotels, more airlines and more destinations.

Ms Daly Franklin said the corporate and leisure departments will also have improved backup, potentially reducing the length of time customers wait before they are helped. For Meyer, the deal will the reverse the effect C-Travel has had on its headcount. Carl Paiva, a long-time Meyer employee, set up the agency in 2000 and lured many Meyer agents with employee ownership plans.

According to a Press release, none of Meyer or Franklin's 23 travel agents will be made redundant by the merger.

But their companies' administrative structures will be reviewed during the next few weeks.

Meyer Travel currently employs 30 people, while Franklin Travel's full-time employees number 13.

"The overlap may result in some redundancies of administrative support staff," the release stated, although it added that management would try to offer redundant staff another job within the Meyer Group of Companies, to which the new travel agency will belong.

The new company will also save money on rent - Franklin Travel will vacate its offices on Washington Lane and move into the Waverly Building on Church Street, which Meyer owns.

But Meyer-Franklin also expects to improve profitability through organic growth.

"This is a case where one plus one is definitely more than two," Ms Daly Franklin said.

"We will be making lots of sales calls and visiting our customers."

The two agencies have slightly different concentrations in the Bermuda travel market. Sixty percent of Meyer's business is generated leisure travel, while 60 percent of Franklin Travel's revenue comes from corporate bookings, according to the release.

Facing pressure from airlines which want to cut out middlemen and sell their own tickets, the two travel agencies have concentrated on services to which they can add value, like tours or planning complicated itineraries.

"The travel agent is going to be taken more as a professional person" like a doctor or a lawyer, said J. Henry Hayward, the current president and chief executive of the Meyer Group of Companies who is also the mayor of St. George's. He will be the new company's chief executive.

According to yesterday's release, the new company will specialise in corporate travel, cruises, tours, high-end leisure, golfing holidays and shore excursions.

"We've made a concerted effort to do those kinds of things," Ms Daly Franklin said.

Meyer, for instance, has concentrated on organising golfing holidays, among other things.

Mr. Hayward said the new agency would focus less on selling mass-market travel, like seat sales from Bermuda to the US.

But even with a simple round-trip airline ticket, Mr. Hayward and Ms Daly Franklin said they can save customers money.

"There are certain tricks to the system," Ms Daly Franklin explained, like booking an unconventional routing which a travel website might not come up with, even though it could be cheaper. In one case, a travel agent saved a customer $700 on a fare he had found on the Internet.