Question 1

Can I run two separate travel brands on their own white label portals from one glideFares account?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can run more than one brand, each on its own white label portal, from the same account, although how many brands you are allowed to add will depend on the plan you are on. Each brand behaves like its own shop front. It can have its own web address, logo, colours, content pages and the contact details that appear on confirmations and travel documents, so a customer booking on one brand sees no sign of the other. You can usually set markups and choose which products are on sale separately for each brand, which is useful if one is aimed at holiday customers and the other at corporate clients. Bookings and reports stay separated by brand so you can see how each one is performing, and staff logins can be limited to just the brand they work on. The part that is not entirely in our hands is the supplier side. Some suppliers are happy for several trading names to sit behind one set of credentials, while others want a separate agreement, or separate credentials, for each brand you trade under. Airlines and consolidators are usually the strictest about this. If you take payments through your own gateway, it is also worth asking your payment provider whether you need a separate merchant account per brand so that settlements, refunds and chargebacks do not get mixed up between the two businesses. Before you start building the second portal, write down the brands you want, what each one will sell and whether they are legally the same company, then share that with our team so we can confirm what your plan covers and check the supplier terms with you.

Question 2

Can I sell the hotels and tour packages I have my own contracts for through the same system I use for the live API inventory?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most setups you can load your own directly contracted hotels and your own tour packages into the same system that serves the live API inventory, so your staff and your customers work in one place instead of switching between a booking screen and a spreadsheet. In practice this means you create the property or the package yourself, add the descriptions and photos, and enter the rates, the seasons, the allocation you have been given and the cancellation terms you agreed with the supplier. Because nobody is checking those rates against a live feed, you are the one responsible for keeping them current. If a hotel changes a rate or your allocation runs out, the system will keep selling at what you last entered until you update it, so somebody in your team needs to own that job. There are honest limits worth knowing. A booking on your own contracted inventory cannot be confirmed instantly by a supplier the way an API booking can, so that confirmation is normally handled by you or your operations staff and then recorded against the booking. Whether your own inventory appears side by side with API results in the same search, or sits in its own section, depends on how your portal is configured and on which modules your plan includes. Before you start loading contracts, ask us to confirm which inventory options are active on your plan and how you would like your own properties to appear next to the live results, so the setup matches the way you actually sell.

Question 3

Will I get a confirmation number from the hotel itself when I book through the API, so my customer has something to show at check in?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you will get a confirmation number you can pass to your customer, though it is not always the hotel's own number straight away. A hotel booking made through an API normally comes back with two references. One is the booking reference created by the booking system, which is what you use to look the booking up, amend it or cancel it. The other is the supplier or hotel confirmation number, which is the one the property staff can usually find in their own system when your guest arrives. For instantly confirmed bookings the hotel number is usually returned in the same response or shortly after, so you can put it on the voucher you send out. For bookings that go through on request, the room is held while the property replies, and the hotel number may only appear once that reply comes back. Until then your customer has a valid booking reference but not a number the hotel can quote, so it helps to explain that in your first confirmation message. How much comes back does depend on the supplier behind the rate. Some return the property confirmation number, the guest name as the hotel holds it and the full address, while others return only their own reference and expect you to contact them if the hotel queries anything. If a supplier does not send a hotel number, we cannot create one for you. Make a test booking on a rate you sell often, check which reference fields come back and how quickly, then build your voucher around the ones that are always filled in.

Question 4

Can I sign up other travel agents under my white label portal so they book through me instead of calling me every time?

Accepted Answer

Yes, this is usually possible. A white label portal can be set up with sub agent accounts, so the smaller agents you work with log in and search and book for themselves instead of sending you every request by phone or message. Each agent gets their own login, sees only their own bookings, and books on a site that carries your branding, so your business stays the one they deal with. In most setups you keep control of the commercial side. You can decide the markup that each agent or group of agents sees, approve new agent registrations before they can start booking, switch an account off if you stop working with that agent, and pull booking reports for the whole network or for one agent at a time. Many agencies also run their sub agents on a prepaid wallet or a credit limit that you set, so bookings only go through when the agent has funds or room on their limit with you. How much of this you get does depend on your plan and on how your portal is configured, and the payment side depends on which payment methods and gateway you have connected. Some suppliers also set rules about who their content can be resold to, so it is worth checking that before you promise a large agent network full access to everything on your site. The next thing to do is write down roughly how many agents you want to onboard, whether you want them paying upfront or on credit with you, and whether they should all see the same markup, then share that with our team so your portal can be configured to match.

Question 5

Can I change the dates or the guest name on a hotel booking after it has been confirmed, or does my customer have to cancel and rebook?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes yes, but not always, and it depends on the supplier behind that particular booking rather than on the portal itself. Some hotel suppliers accept a proper amendment request, where you send the change against the existing booking reference and the stay is updated. Many suppliers do not offer this at all, and for those the only dependable route is to cancel the original booking and make a new one. Because of that, the cancellation policy on the original booking usually decides what is actually possible. If the room is still inside its free cancellation window, cancelling and rebooking is normally the cleanest option, although your customer will pay whatever the rate is on the day you rebook, which may be higher or lower than before. If the booking is already non refundable or past the deadline, a date change often means losing the original amount, so it is worth checking the policy before you promise anything. Guest name changes tend to be easier than date changes. Most suppliers will accept a correction to the spelling of the lead guest name, since that is treated as fixing an error rather than changing the booking. Replacing one traveller with a completely different person is usually treated as a new booking instead, and some suppliers refuse it outright. The practical thing to do is to look at a confirmed booking in your admin panel and see which actions the supplier allows against it, then ask us which of your connected hotel suppliers support amendments so your staff know in advance when a change is possible and when it means cancel and rebook.

Question 6

Can I cancel a flight booking for my customer myself, or do I have to contact the airline every time?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can cancel a flight booking straight from your own booking panel without calling the airline. The cancellation request is passed through to the supplier or airline holding the ticket, and the booking status updates once that request is accepted. For many tickets this happens almost immediately, so you can tell your customer the booking is cancelled while they are still on the phone with you. What the customer gets back, though, is decided by the fare rules and the airline, not by your portal. Some tickets are fully refundable, some return only the taxes, and some give nothing at all once they have been issued. Low cost carriers in particular often handle cancellations outside the normal channel, and a small number of airlines will only accept a cancellation if your agency raises it with them directly. In those cases your panel will flag the booking as needing manual handling rather than appearing to cancel it when nothing has actually happened. Refund money also moves on the airline's timetable rather than yours. Once a cancellation is accepted, the refund amount is worked out and then passed back along the same route the payment came in, which can take a while depending on the airline and the payment method used. It helps to explain this to your customer at the point of cancelling, so they are not expecting the money to appear the same day. Before you promise anyone a free cancellation, open the fare rules on that booking and check the deadline and the penalty, and if you are not sure whether a particular airline allows cancellation through your account, ask our support team to confirm it before you commit.

Question 7

Can I pull a report of all the bookings my agency made last month so I can check my sales?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can pull a report of the bookings your agency made over a chosen period, and most agencies use this as their main way of checking how sales are going. The booking records held in your portal cover what was booked, which staff member or customer made the booking, which supplier it came from and what the customer paid, so a report by date range gives you a view of the month without you having to keep a separate spreadsheet. How much detail you get will depend on your plan and on how your portal has been set up for you. Reports can usually be filtered by travel product, by staff member, by sales channel and by booking status, so you can look at only confirmed bookings, or keep flights and hotels separate. Most setups also let you export the report so you or your accountant can work with it in a spreadsheet. One honest limit is that a report can only show what the supplier has sent back to the portal. If an airline or a hotel supplier processes a change, a cancellation or a refund outside your portal, that update may not appear in your totals until the booking is reconciled, and some suppliers confirm refunds much later than others. Because of that, agencies normally treat the portal report as their working sales record and still check it against supplier statements before they close the month. It helps to decide first which figures you actually want to see each month, then ask our team to confirm which of those your current plan already reports on.

Question 8

Can I hold a flight seat for my customer and issue the ticket later once they have paid me?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in many cases you can, but it depends on the airline and the fare your customer has chosen rather than on the portal itself. When an airline allows it, the booking is created and the seats are reserved, and the response from the flight booking API includes a ticketing deadline. Until that deadline passes, you can collect money from your customer at your own pace and then send a separate ticketing request to turn the reservation into a confirmed ticket. This is useful for group enquiries, corporate travellers waiting on approval, and customers who want to pay by bank transfer. The booking sits in your system with a clear status so your staff can see it is reserved but not yet ticketed, and you can act on it before the deadline. If nobody issues the ticket in time, the airline cancels the reservation automatically and the seats go back into inventory. There are real limits to be aware of. Many low cost carriers and most cheaper promotional fares require payment and ticketing straight away, so no hold is offered at all. Where a hold is allowed, the length of the window varies by airline, route and how close the departure date is, and it is often very short for travel leaving soon. A held fare is also not fully guaranteed, because taxes and surcharges can be recalculated at the moment of ticketing. The next thing to do is tell us which airlines and suppliers matter most to your business, and check the ticketing deadline shown on each booking before you promise a customer extra time to pay.

Question 9

Can I connect my own payment gateway to my white label travel portal so customer payments come straight to me?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can connect your own payment gateway to your white label travel portal so that customer payments land in your own merchant account rather than passing through anybody else first. The portal is built to work with the gateways that travel businesses commonly use, and the setup is usually a matter of adding the credentials your gateway provider gives you once your merchant account has been approved. After that, the checkout page carries your branding and your customers are paying you directly. Which gateways you can connect depends on your plan and on what is offered in your country, so it is worth telling us which provider you have in mind early rather than after you have signed up. There are honest limits here. Your gateway provider decides whether to approve you, which card types you may accept and how quickly funds settle, and none of that sits with us. Many suppliers also need to be paid from a deposit or credit account that you hold with them, which means the money your customer pays you is separate from the money that pays for the booking, and you have to keep that supplier account funded. Refunds usually have to be raised in the gateway as well as against the booking, so your staff need to be comfortable with both steps. A sensible next step is to ask your bank or gateway provider what they need from a travel business, then share those details with us so we can confirm the connection is supported on your plan.

Question 10

Can my flight booking API collect passport details when they are required for a journey?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a flight booking API can collect passport details when they are required for the journey. This may include the passenger's full name as shown on the passport, nationality, date of birth, passport number, expiry date and country of issue. The information needed can vary by airline, route and destination. Some airlines ask for passport details during booking, while others allow them to be added later. Domestic journeys may need less information, but the passenger's name must still match the travel document they will use. The airline or flight supplier decides which details are required and when they must be provided. The API can return these requirements during the booking process when the supplier makes them available. If required information is missing or entered incorrectly, the airline may reject the booking or ask for the details before travel documents can be completed. You should check which passenger fields your chosen flight suppliers support, make sure your booking form asks only for the necessary details, and remind travellers to enter their information exactly as it appears on their passport.