Question 1

Can I start with hotel bookings on my white label travel portal and add flights or other travel products later?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can usually begin with the travel products that matter most to your business and add other products later. Starting with hotels, for example, can help your team become familiar with the booking process before you offer a wider range of travel services. Your portal can be arranged so customers only see the products that are ready for sale. When another product is added, it can appear within the same branded booking experience, so customers do not need to move to a separate website. The exact search and booking steps may differ between hotels, flights and other services because each type of travel has its own information and booking rules. Adding a product later is not always automatic. Availability depends on your glideFares plan, the supplier connections available to you and any commercial or payment arrangements that may be required. A new product may also need its own settings, booking terms and testing before customers can use it. Some suppliers may not offer every destination, fare or service you want to sell. Tell glideFares which products you want to launch first and which ones you may add later, then check what connections, settings and approvals will be needed for each stage.

Question 2

Can I see photos and descriptions of hotel rooms before my customer books, or just the overall hotel information?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can see room photos and detailed descriptions through the hotel booking API, not just general hotel information. When your customer searches for a hotel, the results will show images of the actual rooms available, the bed types, the room size, and what amenities come with each room type. This helps your customers make a more confident choice because they know exactly what they are paying for instead of just seeing a picture of the hotel lobby and a star rating. The amount of detail available does depend on what information the hotel has uploaded to the system. Some hotels provide many high quality photos and detailed descriptions of their rooms, while others may have fewer images or less detail about specific features. You will see whatever the hotel has made available through their inventory, so occasionally you might find a property with limited photos, but this is uncommon. Your customers can usually filter or sort the room options by things like bed type, room size, or view to narrow down what they want to see. This makes it easier for them to compare the rooms side by side and pick the one that suits their needs best. Check your white label portal settings to see which room details and filters you have turned on for your customers, as you may be able to customize which information appears in the search results.

Question 3

Can I see what my travel agency will earn on each booking before my customer completes their purchase?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can see your commission or markup on a booking before your customer pays. When you search for a flight, hotel or other product through your portal or API, the system shows you the retail price your customer will see and the commission or markup you have set up. This means you know exactly what you will earn on every booking before it goes through. How your earnings work depends on how you have set up your account with glideFares. Some travel agencies prefer to set a fixed markup on top of the supplier's price, while others work with commission rates. You can usually set different markups or commissions for different products, different customer types, or different staff members. Your account settings let you control this. The earnings you see before a customer books are based on the live prices from the suppliers at that moment. If a price changes between the time you search and the time your customer completes the booking, your earnings will change too. This is because hotel and flight prices move constantly and we always show you the most up to date rates. Log in to your account and check your commission and markup settings to see how your earnings are currently configured, or contact your account manager if you want to change how much you earn on different types of bookings.

Question 4

Can I make my white label travel portal look like the rest of my travel business?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can usually match your white label travel portal to the main look of your travel business. This can include your logo, brand colours, business name and selected images, so customers feel they are booking with you throughout their visit. The exact branding choices available depend on the portal design and the plan you use. Some parts of the portal may follow a standard layout to keep searches and bookings clear and easy to use. You may be able to adjust common items such as banners, menu labels and page content, but complete control over every button, form or booking screen may not be available. Information supplied by airlines, hotels or other travel suppliers may also appear in a set format because it comes directly from their booking service. It is helpful to prepare clear versions of your logo, your preferred colours and the wording you want customers to see before setup begins. You should also check how the branding appears on a computer and a mobile phone, as images and text can display differently on smaller screens. Ask glideFares which branding options are included with your chosen portal and provide your approved brand materials for review.

Question 5

Can I keep a record of my regular customers in the software so I don't have to type their details in every time?

Accepted Answer

Yes, travel agency software normally lets you save a customer record and reuse it, so you are not retyping the same details for every trip. A record usually holds the traveller name as it appears on their passport, date of birth, contact details, address, passport or ID information, and notes such as a seat preference or a loyalty number. Once it is saved, you search for the customer by name and pull the details straight into a new booking. In day to day use this saves time and it also cuts down on mistakes. Name spelling errors on flight tickets are expensive to fix, so copying from a record you have already checked is safer than typing it again under pressure. Most setups also show you that customer's past bookings on the same screen, which helps when someone calls and asks about a trip they took with you before. There are limits worth knowing. Which fields you get, and whether you can add your own, depends on how your system is set up and on your plan. Some supplier APIs insist that certain details are sent fresh at the time of booking and will not accept anything held on file, so those fields may still need confirming each time. Passport numbers and expiry dates also go out of date, so a saved record is only as good as the last time someone updated it. Holding passport and personal data brings its own responsibilities under the privacy rules that apply to you, including telling customers why you keep it. Ask our team which customer fields your setup includes and whether they can be edited, then agree with your staff who is responsible for keeping records up to date.

Question 6

Can my white label travel portal show prices in my customer's own currency and language?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a white label travel portal can usually show prices in more than one currency and can be set up in more than one language, but how far each of those goes depends on your plan and on the suppliers who provide your inventory. Currency is normally handled in one of two ways. Some suppliers quote in a single settlement currency and your portal converts the amount on screen so your customer sees something familiar, while others can quote directly in the currency you ask for. Converted amounts move with whatever exchange rate you apply, so the total a customer sees can shift slightly between the search and the moment they pay, and their card statement may still show the supplier currency plus a bank conversion. It is worth deciding early which currencies you want to sell in, and whether you want a small buffer in your rates to protect your margin. Language works a little differently. Your own portal wording, the buttons, the labels and the confirmation emails can be translated and kept in whichever languages you need. Content that comes from a supplier, such as hotel descriptions, room names, fare rules and cancellation terms, arrives in whatever language that supplier sends, and that is very often English only. So you can end up with a page where your wording is fully translated but parts of the supplier detail are not, and we cannot promise otherwise. The sensible next step is to list the currencies and languages your customers actually use, then ask us to confirm which of them your connected suppliers support and to run a test search so you can see how a real page looks before you advertise it.

Question 7

Can my customers filter hotel search results by things like free wifi, parking or a swimming pool?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases they can. Hotel booking APIs usually send a list of facilities along with each property, covering common things like wifi, parking, pools, gyms, restaurants, air conditioning, airport shuttles and family friendly features. Your portal can turn those facilities into filters or tick boxes on the search results page, so a customer can narrow a long list down to the properties that suit them. The filters only work as well as the information the supplier sends. Facility details sit in what is called static content, which is the descriptive data about a property rather than the live price and availability. Some suppliers describe their hotels in great detail, others are much thinner, and the same hotel can be described differently by two suppliers. That means a property that genuinely has parking may sometimes be missing the tag for it, and a customer filtering strictly on parking would not see that hotel at all. There is also a difference between a facility existing and a facility being free or included. A hotel may be listed as having wifi or parking when either one is charged separately at the property, and some facilities such as a pool can be seasonal or closed for maintenance without that showing in the data. Facilities are usually described for the whole property too, so something listed at hotel level will not always apply inside the specific room your customer picks. It is worth deciding which filters matter most to your customers and checking what your connected suppliers actually provide for those, and for anything a trip depends on, such as accessibility or a confirmed shuttle, confirm directly with the hotel before you promise it.

Question 8

Can my customers choose business class or premium economy when they search for flights on my portal?

Accepted Answer

Yes, your customers can search by cabin class, and most flight booking APIs accept economy, premium economy, business and first as part of the search request. In practice this means the cabin choice sits on your search form alongside the dates and the passenger numbers, and the results come back priced for the cabin that was asked for. On the booking screen you can usually see which cabin each leg of the journey is in, so your agent can confirm it before the ticket is issued. The level of detail does vary by supplier, so some responses give you a plain cabin name while others also include the booking class letter the airline uses internally. There are a few honest limits worth knowing. Premium economy is not offered by every airline, and some suppliers group it in with economy, so a search may return fewer options than your customer expects. On a journey with connections the cabin can differ between legs, for example business on the long sector and economy on a short feeder flight, and how clearly that is shown depends on the supplier data. Low cost carriers usually have a single cabin with paid extras rather than a true business class, and upgrades requested after booking are handled by the airline rather than through the API. The sensible next step is to run test searches on the routes you sell most and see which cabins your connected suppliers actually return, then decide whether to show every cabin option on your search form or only the ones that reliably bring back results.

Question 9

Can I see which of my staff made a change to a booking if something goes wrong?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most setups you can. Travel agency software of this kind keeps an activity record against each booking, so when a staff member creates a booking, edits passenger or guest details, changes a date, adds a payment or cancels something, that action is stored with the staff login that did it and the time it happened. When a customer calls to complain that their name is spelled differently to what they gave you, you can open the booking and see who last touched it instead of guessing. What the record shows depends on how your account is set up and which plan you are on. Some accounts see a simple history on the booking itself, while others also get a wider activity report across all bookings for a chosen period. If several of your staff share one login, the record will only show that single login, so giving each person their own account is what makes this useful at all. There are honest limits. The software can only record what happened inside it. If a member of your team phoned the airline or the hotel directly and changed something there, that change will not appear as a staff action, and it may only show up later when the supplier sends an update. Changes made by the supplier themselves, such as a schedule change, are recorded as supplier activity rather than as something your staff did. Before you rely on this for checking your team, confirm with us which history and activity views your plan includes, how far back the record is kept, and which staff roles are allowed to see it.

Question 10

Can I show my customers the star rating and guest reviews for a hotel when they search on my portal?

Accepted Answer

Yes for star ratings in almost every case, and sometimes for guest reviews, depending on the supplier behind the hotel. The star rating comes through as part of the property information your API returns, alongside the address, facilities and photos, so you can display it on your search results and filter by it. One thing worth knowing is that star ratings are not measured the same way everywhere. In some countries they are awarded by an official tourism body, and in others the property simply describes itself that way, so a hotel rated highly in one market may feel quite different from one rated the same elsewhere. The rating you see is the one the supplier has recorded, and we pass it on as it is given to us rather than changing it. Guest reviews are less consistent. Some suppliers send an overall guest score with the property, some send nothing at all, and some allow the score but not the written comments, because the reviews belong to whoever collected them and carry their own usage terms. If you sell through more than one supplier you will likely find review data on part of your inventory and not the rest, so your search page needs to look sensible when the score is missing rather than showing a blank space. The best next step is to tell us which hotel suppliers you are connected to and which destinations matter most to you, and we can check what rating and review information actually comes back for those properties before you design the layout around it.