A new online service which aims to help businesses improve their travel planning and reduce the environmental impact of excessive business travel has been developed.

The initiative http://www.whosintown.net/ is the joint brainchild of Holiday Taxis CEO Paul Stanyer together with Manchester-based software company Packnet's commercial director Andrew Montgomery and business associate David Henderson.

The service will allow organisations, SMEs and individuals to share travel plans in order to get greater value out of every business trip made and therefore to reduce the number of journeys made each year, according to the company.

It claims to be able to cut the amount of "dead-time" spent on business trips and increase the number of face-to-face meetings possible in one journey.

It will also enable people to share social and accommodation plans at conferences and for organisations to publicise appropriate networking or business opportunities alongside major conferences and events.

Stanyer, who is supporting the project as a non-executive director, said: "Every day thousands of people are travelling around the globe for just one appointment or to attend a conference. The Whos in Town website will enable people to announce their travel plans so that other parties can approach them and request a meeting while they are in town.

"Registering with the new service will enable users to create a bespoke list of contacts. An alert can then be sent to those contacts to advise them that the user will be in town on a given date."

The new service uses "proven database technology" allied to new intelligent software such as on-the-move SMS alerts. Users have the choice to pre-publicise their travel plans or to only make their presence visible once at the location.

Stanyer added: "Business travellers often have lots of time to kill and can unwittingly be sharing the same planes, passing through the same airports and sitting in the same hotels with other people with whom they could be doing business.

"The service aims to help them to plan better and in doing so improve business performance, reduce travel costs, free up more time to spend at home with family and to reduce travellers' carbon footprints."

by Phil Davies