Question 1

Can I take a deposit from my customer and collect the rest of the money closer to travel?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most setups you can take a deposit first and collect the balance later, but how far you can take it depends on what you are selling and on your payment gateway. The easiest case is anything where you control the inventory, such as your own hotel contracts, tour packages, holiday itineraries or bookings you have made directly with a supplier. Because you decide when the supplier needs to be paid, you can ask the customer for part of the money now and the rest before departure. Live API bookings work differently. When a flight is ticketed or a hotel is confirmed through a supplier connection, that supplier normally wants to be paid in full at the moment of confirmation, so a deposit only works there if you are willing to cover the difference yourself until the customer settles up, or if you hold the booking as a quote and only confirm it once the full amount is in. On the portal side, a part payment usually means the booking is recorded with an amount paid, an amount still owing and a due date, so you and your staff can see at a glance which files are not fully settled. Whether your customers can come back and pay the balance themselves through a link, or whether you take that second payment over the phone, depends on your gateway and on your plan, so it is worth confirming rather than assuming. Before you advertise deposits to customers, check with us which of your product types can be set up for part payment and ask your payment provider whether it supports follow up payments on the same booking.

Question 2

How long does it usually take to get my white label portal up and running after I sign up?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a white label portal is normally live a good deal faster than a website built from scratch, because the booking engine, the search screens and the supplier connections already exist and are simply configured for your brand. Most of the work on our side is setup rather than development. We create your portal, apply your logo, colours and agency details, point it at your domain and switch on the supplier connections you have chosen. If you come to us with your branding files ready, your domain details in hand and a clear idea of which suppliers you want to use, that stage moves along quickly and you can usually be looking at a working portal in test mode soon after you sign up. What really sets the timeline is the part that is not in our hands. If you are using your own supplier contracts, you have to wait for each supplier to issue your credentials and clear you for live traffic, and some of them take their time over it. Payment gateways also run their own checks on your business before they allow live payments. Your plan matters as well, since a portal with several supplier connections, more than one currency or more than one brand has more to configure and test than a single straightforward site. The most useful thing you can do is get the paperwork moving before the build starts, so ask us for the list of branding files, domain details and supplier information we need, and begin your supplier and payment gateway applications at the same time instead of waiting until the portal is otherwise finished.

Question 3

Do I need my own IATA licence to sell flights through your flight API, or can I start without one?

Accepted Answer

No, you do not always need your own IATA licence to start selling flights, but it depends on where the fares come from. Many agencies begin with flight content that sits behind a consolidator or a ticketing partner, so the ticket is issued under their accreditation and you act as the selling agent. That route lets you take bookings on your portal without holding a licence yourself. You normally do need accreditation when you want a direct relationship, such as your own agreement with a global distribution system or a direct link to an airline. Those contracts are between you and that supplier, and they decide who they will sign, what guarantees they ask for and which markets they cover. We can connect our flight API to those contracts once you hold them, but we cannot obtain them for you or promise that a supplier will accept you. Where your business is registered matters too, because the rules on selling air tickets and protecting customer money differ from one country to another. Your local travel trade body or your accountant is the right place to confirm what applies to you. The useful next step is to tell us which markets and routes you want to sell and whether you already hold any accreditation, so we can look at which flight content is open to you now and what you would need in place later to issue tickets in your own name.

Question 4

When I connect a hotel API, do I get the hotel photos and descriptions as well, or do I have to add all of that myself?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases the hotel photos and descriptions come with the connection, so you are not left building a hotel library by hand. Alongside the live availability and pricing feed, hotel suppliers normally publish a content feed that carries the hotel name, the address, the location on a map, the star rating, a written description of the property, the facilities list and a set of images. Your portal reads from that content, so when a customer opens a hotel page they see pictures and a description without you typing anything in. How good that content is does depend entirely on the supplier, and it varies more than people expect. Some suppliers send a generous set of large, recent images for every property, while others send only a handful, or images that are small or clearly dated. Descriptions are often available in English only, and the facilities list can be thin for smaller independent hotels. If you connect more than one supplier, the same hotel may arrive with different photos and wording from each, and the portal has to pick one version to show. For hotels you know well, particularly ones you contract directly or sell heavily, you can usually upload your own images and write your own description so that property looks exactly how you want it. That is worth doing for your top sellers rather than for every hotel in your range, since the supplier content is generally fine for the long tail. Before you go live, ask us to show you hotel pages for two or three destinations you actually sell, so you can judge the photo quality for yourself and decide which properties deserve your own content.

Question 5

Can I create a discount code that my customers type in at checkout to get money off their booking?

Accepted Answer

Yes, promotion codes are a normal part of travel agency software, though exactly what you can set up depends on your plan and on which products you are selling. You create the code yourself in your admin area and decide the rules behind it, such as whether it takes off a fixed amount or a percentage, which products it applies to, the dates it runs between, and how many times it can be used in total or per customer. Your customer then types the code on the payment page and the reduction shows on the total before they pay. The part worth thinking about carefully is where that discount comes from. The supplier still charges you their full price, so a promotion code is really you giving away part of your own markup. If you set a generous code against a product you are selling on a thin margin, you can end up making nothing or paying out of your own pocket without noticing straight away. Many setups let you protect yourself by applying codes only to selected suppliers or products, or by requiring a minimum booking value before the code works. There are also limits that come from the supplier rather than from the software. Taxes and supplier fees usually cannot be discounted, and some fares and rates are sold on terms that do not allow you to alter the price your customer sees. Where that applies, the code will simply not take effect on that item. Before you launch a promotion, check your margin on the products you want to include and set the code to expire on a fixed date so it cannot keep running after your sale ends.

Question 6

If my customer pays for a booking on my portal, does the money come to my own bank account or does it go through you first?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most setups the money lands in your own bank account. A white label portal normally connects to a payment gateway that is registered in your own business name, so when a customer pays on your site, the funds settle directly with you under your own merchant agreement. We are not sitting in the middle holding your customer money. The part that depends on you is the gateway itself. You need to open a merchant account with a payment provider that operates in your country and supports your currency, and you need to pass their checks before they will switch you live. Once you have that, we connect it to the portal using the keys they give you. Which gateways we can connect to depends on your plan and on what that provider allows, so it is worth telling us which one you have in mind before you sign up with them. There is one thing to keep separate in your head. The money your customer pays you is your money, but the cost of the booking still has to reach the supplier, and that usually comes out of a deposit or credit arrangement you hold with the supplier or with us. So you collect retail at the front and settle wholesale at the back, and the gap between the two is your margin. Refunds also follow the same path, meaning a refund to the customer goes out from your gateway while the supplier credits you separately, and those two do not always happen on the same day. Before you commit, check with your chosen payment provider what they charge per transaction and how many days they take to settle, then let us confirm we can connect to them.

Question 7

When my customer books a hotel on my portal, will they see when the free cancellation deadline runs out?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases the cancellation deadline is shown on the room before your customer pays, and again on the confirmation and voucher. The information comes straight from whichever supplier is selling that room, so the portal passes on what that supplier sends us. Where a supplier gives a clear deadline date and time, we can display it. Where a supplier only says the rate is non refundable, that is what your customer will see instead, with no deadline at all. The thing to watch is the time zone. Most hotel suppliers set the deadline in the local time of the hotel, not in your time or your customer's time. So a deadline that looks like one date on the booking can fall a few hours earlier or later than people expect. We try to show the deadline as the supplier states it rather than converting it, because converting it can be misleading, but it is always worth reading the policy text on the voucher rather than relying only on the date. There is also a difference between the deadline and any charge that applies after it. Some suppliers cancel free up to the deadline and then charge one night, others charge the full stay, and some have more than one step. Whether all of that detail reaches your portal depends on how much the supplier sends through their connection, so some rooms will carry fuller wording than others. Before you go live, run a few test searches on the hotels you sell most and check how the deadline and penalty wording appears, so you know what your customers will actually be reading.

Question 8

Can my customers log in to my portal and see their past bookings themselves, or do they have to call my office every time?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a customer login area is a normal part of a travel agency portal, so your travellers can sign in with their own details and look at their bookings without ringing you. In most setups they can see upcoming and past trips, open the booking details, and download their own voucher or invoice copy, which cuts down a lot of the small calls your office gets about dates and reference numbers. What appears in that account depends on how the booking was made. Anything your customer booked themselves on the portal will be there automatically. Bookings you made for them over the phone, or entered manually from a direct hotel contract, usually need to be saved against the same customer record so the system knows they belong together. If you book for the same family under slightly different spellings or different contact details, you may end up with separate accounts and the history will look incomplete. How much a customer can actually do from that login is your decision, and some of it also depends on the supplier and on your plan. Many agencies allow viewing and downloading documents only, and keep changes and cancellations coming to the office, because a supplier may charge differently depending on how the request is made. Self service cancellation and date changes are possible in some cases but not with every supplier, so it is worth checking rather than assuming. Before you switch the login area on for everyone, decide which actions you want customers to handle themselves and which should still come to your team, then make a test booking under a dummy customer and sign in as that customer to see exactly what they will see.

Question 9

If my customer cancels their flight, can the portal tell me how much money they will get back?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases the portal can show you an expected refund amount before you confirm the cancellation, but that figure comes from the airline or the supplier rather than from us, so how precise it is depends on the fare your customer bought and on what the airline sends back. Every ticket carries its own fare rules, and those rules decide whether the ticket is refundable at all, what penalty the airline keeps, and whether any part of the taxes comes back. Some airlines and suppliers return a proper refund quote through the API, so you can see the deduction and the net amount on screen and show it to your customer straight away. Others only return the fare rules as text, and the real amount is confirmed once the cancellation is actually processed. On top of the airline penalty there may be a supplier service charge and whatever fee you choose to keep yourself, so the amount your customer receives is usually less than the headline refund. Timing is set by the airline and by the payment route, not by the portal. Card refunds generally find their way back through the same card that paid, and that can take a while even after the airline has approved it. Low cost carriers often behave differently again, and in some cases unused taxes have to be claimed manually through your supplier rather than automatically. Before you promise a customer anything, open the booking in the portal and read the fare rules recorded at the time of ticketing, then ask your supplier whether refund quotes are returned automatically for the airlines you sell most.

Question 10

Will the pages on my white label portal show up on Google, or will customers only find it if I send them the link?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the public pages of your portal can be found on Google, but it does not happen by itself and not every page in the portal is the right kind of page for search engines. The pages that can be indexed are the ones that behave like a normal website: your home page, any destination or offer pages you create, an about us page, a contact page, your terms and your policy pages. For this to work properly the portal needs to be running on your own domain, because search results are tied to the domain name people see. The search results screens and the booking steps are different. Those are built the moment a customer types in dates and passengers, so a search engine cannot fill in the form and reach them, and in most cases you would not want those live price pages indexed anyway because the results change constantly. On the pages that can be indexed, you can usually set the page title, the description that appears under the link, the headings and the written content, and you can verify the site in Google Search Console and add your analytics tracking so you can see what traffic is arriving. How much of this you can edit yourself depends on your plan and on whether content editing tools are included, so it is worth confirming that before you plan any serious search work. We also cannot promise rankings. Travel is a crowded market, and where you appear depends on your content, your competitors and how long your site has been live, none of which the portal itself decides. Before you start, check which pages your plan lets you edit and get Search Console connected early so you can see what Google is actually picking up.