Business travel startup Travelstop launches in seven Asian markets

It will also release an iPhone app so that travellers can easily monitor their journeys.

Singapore-based startupTravelstop is launching its business travel and expense management platform in seven Asian markets including Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam after closing its seed funding round in August with a US$1.2m haul, an announcement revealed.

Launched in mid-2018, Travelstop aims to simplify corporate travel by helping in the booking process and automating expense reporting. Aside from the expansion, the startup is also releasing an iPhone app enabling business travellers to manage their journeys on-the-go.

Also read: Business trip costs to Singapore in 2017 rose to US$479 a day

In its bid to offer a localised product experience, Travelstop can now be accessed in seven languages, including Bahasa Indonesia, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese and also offer support for regional tax differences, reporting formats, payment options, and eventually plans to introduce customer service to its users in local languages.

“Many companies in Asia have offices in multiple countries across the region,” Travelstop co-founder and CEO Prashant Kirtane said in a statement. “Our goal is to provide these users with the best possible experience in their local language and currency, whilst ensuring that we offer the most relevant bookings.”

The platform has also added new features including “Book for Others” where travel managers can replace a largely manual process, with a simple, online process to book travel. The startup also unveiled a simple way for travel managers to set up “Business Travel Policies” for employees so that business travel bookings that are outside of travel policies are automatically flagged during the booking process, in an effort to improve compliance and bring costs down.

“Our goal is to make employees more productive; they no longer have to return from their business trips and spend hours dealing with the much-dreaded expense claims process,” added Altaf Dhamani, Travelstop’s co-founder and Chief Product Officer. “We're leveraging native device capabilities to make in-trip expense reporting a breeze. Our focus is to provide an exceptional mobile experience for users, regardless of device."

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