Question 1

Can I see what amenities a hotel has, like whether there is a gym or free wifi, before my customer books?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the hotel API will pass through the amenities and facilities information for each property, and that data will show on your portal so your customers can see what is included before they commit to a booking. The detail you get depends on what the hotel suppliers send through the API. Most hotels provide a good list of their main facilities, such as swimming pools, gyms, restaurants, business centres, and whether wifi is complimentary or paid. Some properties are more detailed than others, and occasionally a smaller hotel may not have sent through a complete list of everything they offer. You can choose how to display this information on your portal. Some travel portals show amenities as icons or tick boxes so customers can scan them quickly, while others display them as a written list. You can also let your customers filter the search results to show only hotels with certain amenities, which makes it easier for them to find what they are looking for. Before you launch your portal, check a few hotels in your test searches to see what level of detail is coming through from the suppliers, so you know what your customers will be able to see when they search.

Question 2

Can I let my customer pay part of the money when they book and the rest closer to the travel date?

Accepted Answer

Yes, on some bookings, but not on all of them, and the supplier decides which ones. A part payment works where the supplier does not need the whole amount straight away, which is common with hotels that allow payment near the stay date and with some tour and holiday products. Flights are usually the opposite, because most airlines want the fare paid and the ticket issued at the moment of booking, so there is nothing left to collect later. On the portal you can set this up as a deposit rule. Your customer pays the agreed part when they book, the balance is recorded against the booking as still owing, and you choose the date by which it has to be paid. The software keeps that balance visible to your staff and can prompt you and the customer as the date gets close, so nothing is forgotten in the weeks between booking and travel. Be clear with the customer about what a part payment really buys. Until the supplier has the full amount, the booking often sits as held or on request rather than fully confirmed, and if the balance is not paid in time the supplier can release it. Whether a balance due later is allowed at all differs from one supplier and one API to the next, and card charges and refunds on a part payment follow the terms of your own payment provider. The sensible next step is to ask each of your suppliers which of their products allow a balance to be paid later, then set your deposit rules and reminder dates on the portal to match what they actually permit, and write your payment terms onto the booking confirmation so the customer knows when the rest is due.

Question 3

Can my customer add their frequent flyer number when they book a flight on my portal?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases they can. The passenger details screen on a flight booking can carry a frequent flyer or loyalty number along with the name, date of birth and contact details, and that number is passed to the airline with the rest of the booking. If the airline accepts it, the miles are credited to your customer's account just as they would be if the customer had booked on the airline's own website. What makes it work is the name matching the loyalty account. Airlines check the passenger name against the name held on the membership, and if the spelling is different, or the surname and given name are the wrong way round, the number is quietly ignored and no miles appear. The field is only as good as the care your staff take typing it in, so ask your customer for the name as it appears on their loyalty card. Be aware that this is not guaranteed for every airline or every fare. Some low cost carriers do not run a loyalty programme at all, some airlines accept the number but do not award miles on the cheapest or heavily discounted fare types, and a few suppliers do not pass the field through to the airline at all. Whether the number can be sent depends on the airline, the fare and the supplier connection, so it is not something we can promise across the board. The practical step is to test a live booking with a real loyalty number on the airlines you sell most and see whether it shows on the ticket. Where it is not accepted, tell your customer they can still add the number at check in or claim the miles from the airline afterwards with a copy of their ticket.

Question 4

Can I sell hotels I have contracted myself alongside the ones coming from the hotel API, in the same search?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most setups you can sell hotels you have contracted yourself next to the hotels that come in from the API, and both can appear in the same search results. Agencies often have properties they have negotiated directly, and there is usually no reason those should sit outside the portal. The usual way this works is that you load your own hotel into the system once, with its description, photos, room types, board options and the rates you want to sell at, along with the dates those rates apply to. When a customer searches that city, your property is checked against the same dates and guest numbers as everything else, and it appears in the list beside the supplier results. The customer does not see any difference, and the booking lands in your reports like any other booking. There are limits worth knowing about. Whether this is included depends on your plan and on how your portal has been set up, so it is worth asking rather than assuming. Availability for your own hotels stays your job, because that hotel is not sending live updates the way a connected supplier does, so if rooms sell somewhere else you have to reduce them yourself. You may also find the same property arriving from a supplier as well, which can show up twice unless the two are matched together. Check with your account contact whether direct contracting is switched on for you, and if it is, start with a single property so you can see how the loading and the availability side really feel before you move the rest across.

Question 5

Can my customers make their own account on my portal so they can see their past bookings and book faster next time?

Accepted Answer

Yes, your customers can have their own account on the portal, sign in whenever they like and see the trips they have already booked with you. When someone registers, the portal keeps a small profile for them with their contact details and the travellers they book for most often, such as a partner or their children. On their next visit those details can be filled in for them rather than typed again, which speeds up the payment step and cuts down on spelling mistakes in passenger names. Their past bookings sit behind the same login, so they can open an old trip, check the booking reference and download the ticket or hotel voucher again without ringing your office. There are limits worth knowing about. A booking your staff makes for a customer who phones in will only show in that customer's account if it is linked to the account at the time, so it helps to ask for the email address they registered with. Whether a customer can cancel or change a trip on their own from that screen depends on your settings and on what the supplier allows, and many agencies prefer to keep that switched off so every change passes through their own team. Anything the supplier does not send back to the portal, such as a seat added later at the airport, will not appear there either. Register as a test customer yourself, make a booking and then look at the account screen exactly as your customer would see it, and decide before you go live how much you want them to be able to do there without your help.

Question 6

Before my customer pays, will the flight API tell me whether that ticket can be cancelled or changed later?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you will see the fare conditions before your customer pays, because the flight API sends them back with the fare quote just before the booking is confirmed. That is where you find out whether the ticket is refundable, whether the dates can be changed for a fee, or whether the fare is completely locked once it is issued. How clear that information is depends on the airline and the supplier behind the search. Some airlines send a tidy summary that your staff can read at a glance, others send long rule text written for airline staff rather than for travel agents, and many low cost airlines simply mark the fare as non refundable and leave it there. The exact penalty is also not always known until you actually ask for the cancellation, so the fare conditions should be treated as a guide to what is allowed rather than a final quote of what it will cost. On your portal you can choose how much of this your customer sees. Most agencies show a short line next to the fare saying whether it can be changed or refunded, and keep the full conditions stored with the booking so any member of staff can answer the customer later without going back to the supplier. Run a few live searches on the routes you sell most often and look at what actually comes back for a cheap fare and a flexible one, so you know what your staff can safely tell a customer before taking payment.

Question 7

Will my customers automatically get an email confirming their booking, or do I have to send it myself?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases the portal sends the confirmation email on its own as soon as the booking is confirmed, so you do not have to sit and write one out for every customer. When a booking goes through, the system puts together an email with the traveller details, the flight or hotel details, the reference the supplier sent back and the amount paid, and it sends that to the email address your customer entered at the time of booking. A copy normally goes to your own office address as well, so your staff can see what has been sold without having to log in and look. The emails carry your own agency name and logo rather than anyone else's, because the portal belongs to you. You can usually change the wording and the look of these emails, and it is worth doing that early so they sound like your agency and not like a machine. What you cannot always control is the timing of the supplier documents. The confirmation from your portal goes out straight away, but if a ticket or a hotel voucher has to come back from the airline or the hotel system first, the email carrying that document can only go once the supplier has actually issued it. With some fares and some suppliers that happens instantly, and with others there is a short wait. Before you go live, put a test booking through to your own inbox and read the email exactly as a customer would, check the spam folder as well in case it lands there, and let us know if you want the wording changed or a second office address copied in.

Question 8

When the hotel API shows me a price, does it include all the taxes, or will my customer be asked for more money at the hotel?

Accepted Answer

Usually yes, the price your staff see in the hotel search already has the taxes the supplier collects built into it, so the amount your customer pays you covers the room and those taxes together. That is the figure your portal quotes and the figure your voucher is based on. What sits outside that amount is the local charges some towns and some hotels collect at the front desk themselves, things like a city or tourist tax, or a resort or service fee charged by the property. The supplier cannot take that money on your behalf, so it is not part of the price you are shown, and your customer settles it directly when they arrive or when they check out. The hotel API does normally send a note about those charges, and the portal shows it alongside the room so your staff and your customer can read it before the booking is confirmed. We should be honest that how clear the note is depends entirely on the supplier. Some send it as a tidy separate item that can be displayed on its own line, while others send it only as a sentence buried in the room conditions, sometimes in the currency of the hotel rather than yours, so it cannot always be presented to the customer as one neat total in advance. Before you start selling, run a few test searches on cities that are known for charging a tourist tax, open the room conditions on a handful of results, and see how that wording comes through so your staff know what to tell a customer who asks.

Question 9

Can my customer choose their seat on the plane when they book a flight on my portal?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in many cases your customer can pick a seat at the time of booking, but it depends on the airline and on the fare you are selling. Airlines that share their seat maps through the booking API will send back a plan of the cabin showing which seats are free, which are already taken and which ones carry an extra charge. When that information comes through, your portal can display it and your customer can choose a seat before they pay. Low cost airlines nearly always charge for a seat, and many full service airlines now charge for the better seats as well, so the total your customer sees may go up once they make a choice. There are also airlines that do not open their seat maps to outside systems at all, and some that only open them once the ticket has been issued. In those cases your customer will not see a seat plan on your portal, and the seat has to be picked later on the airline's own site using the booking reference, or at the check in desk at the airport. That is the airline's decision rather than something the portal can force, so it varies from one airline to another and sometimes from one route to another. If seat selection matters to the trips you sell, check which of the airlines you are connected to actually pass seat maps through, and tell your booking staff to warn customers politely when a seat can only be chosen after the ticket is issued.

Question 10

Can I put a flight and a hotel together and sell them to my customer as one holiday package at a single price?

Accepted Answer

Yes, most white label travel portals let you combine a flight and a hotel into one package and show your customer a single price instead of two separate ones. Your staff, or the customer on the website, picks the flight and then the hotel, and the portal adds them into one itinerary with one total to pay. In practice the portal is still making two separate bookings behind the scenes, one with the airline side and one with the hotel side. Your customer only sees one package and pays once, but the rules that sit underneath stay with each supplier. That matters most when something changes later, because the cancellation terms on the flight and the cancellation terms on the hotel are usually not the same, and a package price does not merge them into one rule. Be aware that how much you can do here depends on your plan and on the suppliers connected to your portal. Some fares and some hotel rates are not allowed to be sold as part of a package, and a few cannot be repriced once they are combined, so they will simply not appear as package options. If you want to add your own transfers or sightseeing into the same package, check first whether that is included in your setup, because it is not always switched on by default. Before you start advertising packages, try building one or two on a real route with real dates and read the terms that come back for each part of it, so you know exactly what you would owe if the customer cancels.