Question 1

Can my portal show hotels on a map so my customer can see how close they are to the city centre?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a map view is normally possible, because most hotel suppliers send the location of each property as map coordinates along with the name and address. Your portal can use that to drop a pin for every hotel in the search results, so your customer can click a pin and see the room price, or filter the list down to the area they care about instead of scrolling through pages of properties. There are two honest limits worth knowing. The first is the quality of the supplier data. Big city hotels are usually mapped correctly, but small guesthouses, apartments and newly loaded properties sometimes come through with a pin that sits in the wrong street, or with nothing more precise than the town centre. When that happens the fault is in the feed, not in your portal, so the fix is to report it to the supplier or to hide that property rather than to change the map. The second is the map itself. Map services are provided by outside companies, so you may need to open your own account with a map provider and add your own key, and some of them start charging once your traffic passes their free allowance. Whether a map view is switched on, and whether you also get extras like a distance to airport filter or a search around a chosen landmark, can depend on your plan, so it is not safe to assume it is included by default. Ask us to confirm that map view is enabled on your plan, then run a few searches in the cities you sell most and check that the pins land where you expect before you promote the feature to your customers.

Question 2

Is there anything on my portal that stops people booking flights with stolen credit cards?

Accepted Answer

Yes, there are several things you can put in place, although no portal can stop card fraud completely. The first line of defence is your payment gateway rather than the booking software itself. Most gateways offer card authentication, where the customer has to approve the payment through their own bank app or a code sent to their phone. When that check is in place, many banks treat the payment as verified and the liability for a disputed charge often sits with them rather than with you, but the exact rules depend on your gateway, your acquiring bank and the country the card was issued in, so please confirm that with them directly. On the portal side, the main protection is not issuing the ticket the instant the payment goes through. You can set things up so that bookings come to you for a quick look before they are confirmed with the airline, which gives you a chance to spot the ones that feel wrong. The usual warning signs are a booking made for travel the same day or the next day, a passenger name that does not match the cardholder, several attempts with different cards, or a route that has nothing to do with where the customer says they are. Whether you can apply this review step to all bookings or only some of them depends on your plan and on how your gateway is set up. There are also simple habits that help. For a high value or very last minute booking from someone you do not know, it is reasonable to ask for proof of identity before you issue, and to keep a record of what you checked. If anything looks off, cancel and refund rather than ticket and hope. The best next step is to ask your payment provider exactly what fraud screening and card authentication they include, then tell us how you want risky bookings held for review so we can match the portal settings to that.

Question 3

Can I add bags and seats to a flight booking after my customer has already paid?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in many cases you can, but it is not guaranteed for every booking and it depends far more on the airline than on the software. Low cost airlines are usually the easiest. Because the booking stays in the airline's own system, the supplier connection often lets you reopen a paid booking, see which extras are still on sale, and buy them straight away. Full service airlines booked through a global distribution system work differently. Some let you request a seat at no charge, some sell extra bags only through their own website or call centre, and some allow changes only before the ticket is issued. So your portal will show the options the supplier makes available to it, and nothing beyond that. Where it is supported, you open the booking in your admin area, pick the passenger and the flight leg, and the extras come back live with whatever the airline is asking at that moment. That can be more than it would have been at the time of booking, because airlines often raise bag charges closer to departure, so it helps to warn your customer early. You collect the money in the usual way and the booking is updated. When an extra cannot be added through the portal, you are not stuck. You arrange it directly with the airline using the booking reference, then note it on the booking so your records match what the passenger actually holds. The next thing to do is ask which of the suppliers on your account support changes after ticketing, and test one real low cost booking so you know what your team can handle in house.

Question 4

Can my customers log in to see their old bookings and download their tickets again without having to email me?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a white label portal can give your customers their own login area where they see their upcoming and past trips and pull their own documents again, so you are not forwarding the same voucher every week. Usually the account is created when they book, or they can register first and their bookings get linked to them afterwards using their booking reference and the email they used. What they can actually do in there varies. Viewing the trip details and downloading a ticket or voucher that has already been issued is the straightforward part. Anything that touches the supplier, like cancelling, changing a date or adding a bag, depends on whether that supplier allows self service at all, and many do not. In those cases the sensible setup is to let the customer send a request from their account that lands with you, and you handle it with the supplier yourself. Some portals also hide the document until the booking is fully confirmed, which is normal for hotels that need to come back to you. It is also worth deciding what you do not want shown. Your cost and your markup should stay out of the customer view, and you may prefer not to show internal notes or supplier names there either. Whether the customer area is part of your current plan, and how much of it you can switch on or off, is something to confirm rather than assume. The next step is to make a test booking on your own portal, log in as that customer, and check that the documents, the trip details and the request option all look the way you want your travellers to see them.

Question 5

Can my customers see the cancellation deadline for a hotel room before they book, or do they only find that out afterwards?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the cancellation deadline normally comes through with the room rate and can be shown to your customer before they pay. Hotel suppliers return a policy alongside every rate, and that policy usually states the date and time after which a charge applies and how much that charge will be. Your portal can display this on the room listing, again on the checkout page and on the voucher, so the guest reads it while they are still choosing rather than discovering it later. How clear it looks does depend on the supplier. Some send a tidy date and time that the portal can format neatly and even use for a free cancellation filter. Others send a plain sentence of text that has to be shown as it is written. And some rates are non refundable from the moment the booking is made, in which case the portal should say so rather than show a deadline. Deadlines are also usually set in the hotel's local time, which is worth spelling out for a guest booking from another country. The honest limit is that the deadline belongs to the supplier and the hotel, not to you. You cannot extend it, and if your own agency terms add a service fee on top of a cancellation you need to state that separately in your own booking conditions, because it will not appear in the supplier's policy text. The policy is also tied to the exact rate that was quoted, so if a customer comes back days later and searches again, the rate and the deadline may both have changed. It is worth making a test booking on your portal and checking that the policy wording appears in all three places, on search, at checkout and on the voucher, before you start selling.

Question 6

Can I issue an invoice to my corporate clients who want to be billed at the end of the month instead of paying for every trip?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most setups you can. Travel agency software normally lets you tag certain customers as account or credit customers, so when a booking is made for them the portal confirms it without asking for a card, records the amount against their account, and lets you send an invoice or a statement later covering everything they booked in that period. You can usually set a credit limit per client so the portal stops accepting new bookings once they reach it, which saves you chasing a company that has quietly run up more than you are comfortable carrying. It helps to know what happens behind the scenes. Your supplier or the airline still wants paying at the time the ticket is issued or the room is confirmed, so the money for that comes from your own funds or from the credit you hold with that supplier. Billing your client monthly is an arrangement between you and them, and the software is simply keeping the record straight. That is why credit customers suit clients you already trust. Be aware that how much of this is included depends on your plan, and that invoice layouts, tax fields and the wording you need in your country often take a little setting up before the first one goes out. Some suppliers also insist on immediate payment for certain products, so those bookings may behave differently even for an account customer. Before you offer monthly billing, write down which clients you want on account, what limit each should have and what your invoice needs to show, then ask us to walk through how that maps onto your portal.

Question 7

Can my customers' payments go straight into my own bank account, or does the software company hold the money first?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most setups the money your customers pay goes straight into your own bank account. Your portal is connected to a payment gateway that is opened in your own business name, so the card payment is processed as a payment to you rather than to anyone else. Your customer sees your brand at checkout, and the charge on their card statement reads as your business. The way it usually works is that you apply for a merchant account with a payment gateway or with your own bank, they approve you, and then those details are added to your portal. From that point, every online booking is charged through that gateway and settled into your account on whatever timetable the gateway gives you. We do not sit in the middle holding your funds. There are a few honest limits worth knowing. Not every gateway can be connected, so it depends on which ones are supported in your country and on the plan you are on, and the gateway itself decides whether to approve your business. Card fees, refunds and chargebacks stay a matter between you and your gateway. Separately, many airline and hotel suppliers still need to be paid from a deposit or credit account you hold with them, so customer money arrives with you while you fund the supplier yourself. Before you commit, ask your bank or your preferred gateway what sort of merchant account you can get, and check with us that the gateway you have in mind can be connected to your portal.

Question 8

If a hotel cancels a booking that I have already confirmed, will I find out before my customer turns up at the property?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you will know well before check in, but how fast the news reaches you depends on the supplier. When a hotel or a supplier cancels or rejects a reservation that was already confirmed, that change comes back through the connection and the status on the booking in your portal is updated, normally from confirmed to cancelled. Your portal can also flag it for you so you are not relying on noticing it by chance, and the original booking record stays in place so you can see what was held and what was paid. Where we have to be honest is the timing and the detail. Some suppliers send the update almost straight away, others only pass it on when their own staff have processed it, which can mean several hours or longer. A few send the new status with no reason attached, so you may know the room is gone without knowing why. And if a property has spoken to your customer directly rather than going back through the booking channel, nothing comes through the connection at all until somebody tells you, which is simply outside what any portal can see. Because of that, treat the status in your portal as your main record but not your only safety net. Bookings that came through as on request, long stays, group bookings and anything over a busy local event are the ones most worth reconfirming with the supplier a few days before arrival, and it helps to keep a note on the booking of who you spoke to and when. If this matters a lot for the kind of travel you sell, check with us which of your connected suppliers send live status updates and which do not, and set up alerts on your account so cancelled bookings reach you rather than waiting to be found.

Question 9

Can the software connect to my accounting program so I do not have to type every booking in twice?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases, although how it works depends on your plan and on the accounting package you use. There are normally two ways of doing it. The simpler one is an export, where your bookings come out as a file you upload into your accounts once a day or once a week, carrying the customer name, the travel dates, what you sold the booking for and what it cost you. The second way is a live connection, where each confirmed booking is passed straight into your accounting program so the sale appears without anyone typing anything. A live connection only works if your accounting package allows outside systems to send records into it, and not every package does, so that is the first thing worth checking before you plan around it. It is fair to say that the two systems rarely line up perfectly. Your accounts may need a tax treatment or a ledger code that a booking record does not hold, refunds and part cancellations usually need a person to decide how they should be posted, and supplier invoices still have to be matched against what the portal recorded. Most agencies settle on a sensible middle ground, where everyday sales flow across on their own and a proper reconciliation is done by hand at the end of the month. The useful next step is to tell us which accounting package you work in and whether you would rather start with a file export or go straight to a live connection, and we can confirm what is possible on your plan before you change anything in your bookkeeping.

Question 10

Will the confirmation emails my customers get show my company name or the software company's name?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the emails your customers receive carry your own company name and logo, not anyone else's. A white label portal is built so everything the traveller sees belongs to your brand, and that includes the booking confirmation, the voucher and the payment receipt. Your logo sits at the top, your company name and contact details sit in the footer, and the sender name is set to your business so the message reads as if it came straight from you. The one part that usually needs a little setup is the address the mail is actually sent from. For customers to see your own domain as the sender, a few records need adding to your domain so that mail providers trust messages sent on your behalf. Your domain host can do that quickly, and until it is done the emails may still go out from a neutral address with your branding inside. Whether a fully custom sending address is included can depend on your plan, so it is worth checking. The honest limit is on documents a supplier issues directly. An airline e-ticket is produced by the airline or the system behind the fare, so it keeps the airline's own layout, and some hotel vouchers show the supplier reference alongside yours. You can send these inside your own branded email, but the wording printed on them is not something you can rewrite. The simplest next step is to make a test booking, read the confirmation as a customer would, and then tell us what to change in the logo, sender name and footer wording, and whether you want your own sending domain set up to match your website.