Question 1

What should I do if my customer arrives at the hotel and the front desk says it has no record of the booking?

Accepted Answer

Yes, this can almost always be sorted out, and the first thing to know is that the property usually does hold the reservation even when the front desk cannot see it straight away. When a booking is confirmed through the portal, the supplier passes it to the hotel and returns a confirmation reference. That reference is printed on the voucher your customer carries, and it is the single most useful thing they can hand over at check in. Most of these moments turn out to be a search problem rather than a missing booking. Hotels often file a reservation under the supplier or the wholesale account rather than the guest, or the guest name has been entered in a different order or spelling from the passport. Asking the desk to look up the confirmation reference on the voucher, instead of the guest name, clears up a great many of them within a minute or two. If the room genuinely is not there, because the hotel has sold out or has closed a floor, the supplier support team is the one that handles it, and they will normally arrange a comparable room at another property nearby. How quickly that happens, and what the customer is entitled to, does depend on the supplier and on the type of rate that was booked, so it is honest to say that you will get it fixed rather than to promise a particular outcome on the spot. Make sure every voucher you send goes out with the confirmation reference clearly on it, and keep a note of how to reach supplier support out of hours, so you are not searching for it while a tired customer stands at a desk.

Question 2

Can I sell a flight and a hotel together as one holiday package instead of two separate bookings?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most setups you can put a flight and a hotel together and sell them as one holiday, with a single price and a single confirmation for the traveller. The portal searches each part in the background, then shows the combination as one item in the basket, so the customer sees one total to pay instead of two separate amounts. Behind the scenes the two parts are still held with their own suppliers, and that matters because each one keeps its own rules. The hotel may be free to cancel up to a certain date while the flight becomes non refundable the moment it is ticketed, so the terms you show for the package have to follow the stricter of the two. It is far better to put that in front of the customer before payment than to explain it afterwards. How much you can bundle depends on what you have connected and on your plan. Many agencies also want to drop a transfer, a day tour or their own contracted hotel into the same package, and that is usually possible, although anything you supply yourself has to be loaded and priced by you rather than pulled from a supplier. Where a supplier does not permit its rates to be sold inside a package, that content will simply not appear as an option in the search. Before you start promoting packages, build one for a route you already sell often, then read the cancellation wording that comes out at the end so you know exactly what you are committing to if the customer changes their plans.

Question 3

Can my customers choose their seats and add baggage when they book a flight on my portal?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases they can, though how much choice they get depends on the airline. When a flight is searched on your portal, the airline or the supplier behind it sends back not just the fare but also the extras it is willing to sell at that moment, and seats and extra baggage are usually part of that. Your customer picks them during the booking steps, before payment, and the cost is added to what they pay you. The honest limit is that not every airline shares the same amount of detail. Low cost carriers tend to be very good at this, because selling extras is a large part of how they make money, so you will often see a full seat map with prices per seat and several baggage options. Full service airlines vary. Some will let you request a seat but only confirm it later, some only release seat maps close to departure, and some will only accept a baggage request rather than sell you the bag outright. On a few fares, extras cannot be added at the time of booking at all, and the passenger has to do it with the airline directly or at the airport. It also depends on which sources are switched on for your account. A booking flow that pulls from several suppliers may show a seat map for one airline and nothing for another on the very same search results page, which is normal and not a fault in your portal. Where an extra cannot be sold, the cleanest approach is to say so on the booking page so the traveller knows to arrange it themselves. If this matters to the routes you sell most, ask which of your connected sources return seat maps and baggage options, and run a test booking on a route you know well to see exactly what your customer will be shown.

Question 4

Can I make a booking myself for a customer who phones me instead of using my website?

Accepted Answer

Yes. A white label portal is not only a public website, it normally comes with a back office where you and your staff can search and book on a customer's behalf, just as you would over the counter. The customer calls, you search the same flights or hotels the website would show, and you complete the booking under your own agency name. Bookings made this way sit in the same place as the ones your customers make themselves. You see them in one list, with the same reference numbers, the same vouchers and the same tickets, so you are not left keeping two separate sets of records. You can also send the confirmation on to the traveller once the booking is done, so they still get their paperwork even though they never opened the website. There are a few honest limits worth knowing. Some suppliers treat an agent booking and a customer booking exactly the same way, and others apply different rules, so what you are allowed to change or cancel afterwards depends on the supplier and the fare rather than on your portal. Payment is the other point. Over the phone you may need to collect the money in a different way, and what is available to you depends on your payment provider and your plan. The sensible next step is to decide which members of your team should be allowed to book from the back office, ask which payment methods your plan supports for a booking taken over the phone, and then put one small booking through that way from start to finish so you know how it behaves.

Question 5

Can I add my own markup to hotel rates before my customers see them?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in nearly every setup you can add your own markup to hotel rates before a customer sees them, and this is how most agencies earn their margin. The rate that arrives from the supplier is your cost, and what your customer sees is that cost plus whatever you have decided to add on top. Most portals let you set this up in more than one way. You can apply a flat amount per booking or per night, or a percentage of the rate, and you can usually vary it by supplier, by city or country, by star rating, or by the type of customer, so a corporate account and a walk in customer need not be treated the same. Some setups also let you show a discount against your own selling price, which is handy when you want to run an offer without touching the margin underneath it. What you cannot always control is how the supplier wants its price presented. Some contracts require taxes and local fees to be shown separately, and a few suppliers restrict what may be displayed beside their rate at all. Those rules come from the supplier and not from the technology, so what is possible for you depends on which suppliers you are connected to and on the plan you are running. Before you go live, run a handful of test searches and compare what your portal shows against the cost you are actually being given, so you can be sure your markup rules are firing the way you expect on every supplier you use.

Question 6

Can I see a report of everything my agency has sold in a given month?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a booking report of that kind is a standard part of travel agency software. You normally pick a date range in your admin panel and get back every booking made in that period, with the traveller name, the product, the supplier, the booking reference and whether it is confirmed, cancelled or still on hold. Most systems let you download the same list as a spreadsheet so you can work on it offline or hand it to your accountant. Beyond the plain list, you can usually narrow the report down in ways that answer real questions. You can filter by the staff member or sub agent who made the sale, by product type so flights and hotels are counted separately, or by status so cancelled bookings do not inflate your totals. Many setups also show what came from the supplier and what you added as your own margin, which is the figure most owners actually want at the end of the month. There are honest limits. A report can only show what passed through the system, so anything you booked directly on a supplier site or over the phone will not appear unless someone enters it manually. How far back the history goes, and which extra reports are included, can also depend on your plan. Supplier side changes such as a late cancellation may take some time to be reflected, so a report run on the first of the month may differ slightly from the same report run a week later. Run the report for a month you already know well and compare it against your own records, so you can see what is captured automatically and what your team still needs to enter by hand.

Question 7

If an airline changes or cancels a flight I already sold, will my portal tell me?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases the change comes through to your portal, but it does not always arrive the moment the airline decides it. Airlines send schedule changes and cancellations out through the same channel the booking was made on, and your system picks them up and marks the booking so your team can see something has moved. How quickly that happens depends on the airline and on the supplier connection the ticket was issued through. Some send an update within minutes, others send it in a batch overnight, and a few only make it visible when someone retrieves the booking again. Because of that, a good habit is to treat the portal as your record rather than your alarm. Ask for the changed bookings to be listed in one place your staff open every morning, so nothing sits unseen in a mailbox. Small time changes of a few minutes usually need no action, while a cancellation or a long shift almost always means calling the traveller before they hear it from somewhere else. What you can do about the change is set by the airline, not by the portal. Some allow a free rebooking or a refund when they move a flight beyond a certain amount of time, others expect a fresh ticket, and low cost carriers often have their own rules. The portal can show you the new details and let you act on them, but it cannot give a waiver the airline has not offered. Check with us which of your supplier connections push these updates automatically, and make sure the alerts reach a mailbox somebody actually watches.

Question 8

Can I give my staff different levels of access so a junior agent cannot see everything?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Travel agency software is normally built so that every member of your team has their own login, and each login is tied to a role that decides what that person can see and do inside the portal. You stay in control of who gets which role, and you can change or switch off a login the same day someone leaves. In practice this means a junior agent can be set up to search, quote and book, while the parts you would rather keep private stay hidden from them. Common examples are your markup and commission settings, your supplier logins, the sales and profit reports, refunds and cancellations, and the ability to add or remove other users. Most systems also keep a record of who made each booking and each change, which is useful when you need to check what happened on a file. How fine the control gets does depend on the plan you are on and on the system itself. Some setups give you a few fixed roles such as admin, agent and accounts, while others let you tick permissions one by one. It is also worth knowing that anything your staff do with a supplier still goes out under your agency account, so access control inside the portal protects your commercial information but does not change who the supplier holds responsible. Before you add your next team member, open the users area of your portal, look at the roles that already exist, and check that the one you plan to give them hides your markups and reports.

Question 9

Can my customers pay directly on my white label portal with their own card?

Accepted Answer

Yes, your customers can pay directly on your white label portal with their own card, as long as you have a payment gateway connected to it. The portal itself does not hold the money. It passes the payment to the gateway you have signed up with, and the gateway settles the funds into your own bank account on its usual cycle. Getting that gateway account is the part that sits with you rather than with the portal. You apply to a payment provider in your own country, they check your business documents and your website, and once they approve you they give you the keys that are entered into your portal settings. After that the payment screen carries your own brand and the traveller never sees anyone else in the transaction. Most portals can hold more than one gateway, which is useful if you sell in different countries or want a backup when one provider is down. There are a few honest limits. Card payments carry a fee charged by the gateway, and refunds, chargebacks and settlement timing all follow that provider rules, not the portal rules. Some suppliers also need to be paid from a deposit or credit account that you keep with them, so the money reaching your bank and the money leaving for the supplier can move on different days. Which gateways you can connect depends on your plan and on what is supported in your market. Before you go live, speak to a payment provider that serves your country, ask them what documents they need and what they charge, and then run a small live test booking to confirm the money lands where you expect.

Question 10

If a customer cancels a hotel booking made through the API, how does the refund reach them?

Accepted Answer

Yes, cancellations can be handled through the same connection that made the booking, but the money comes back on the supplier's terms and not on yours. When your customer asks to cancel, your site sends that request through to the supplier holding the reservation. The supplier checks the rate rules attached to that particular room and decides what, if anything, is refundable. Your booking page then shows the outcome. The important part to understand is that the rules travel with the rate, not with your website. A room sold as fully flexible will usually cancel cleanly up to a deadline set by the hotel, while a cheaper advance rate may be non refundable from the moment it is confirmed. That is why two bookings made on the same day for the same property can end very differently, and why it is worth showing the cancellation terms clearly to the customer before they pay. How the refund actually reaches the traveller depends on how the payment was taken. If the customer paid you and you settled with the supplier, the refund lands back with you first and you return it to the customer. If the payment went straight through to the supplier, they will process it back to the original card. Timing is set by the supplier and the banks in between, so it is honest to tell customers it takes a few working days rather than promising it will be instant. Before you go live, run a test booking and then cancel it, so you can see exactly what your customers will be told and how long the money takes to come back.