Question 1

Will my portal be on my own web address with my own logo, or will my customers see another company's name on it?

Accepted Answer

Yes, it runs on your own web address with your own logo, and that is really the whole point of a white label portal. You point a domain you own at the portal, your logo, colours and company details are set up on it, and your customers search, book and pay on a site that looks like your business from the first screen to the last. The branding goes further than the home page. The search results, the booking confirmation screen, the emails that go out to your customer and the invoice or voucher you hand them can all carry your name and your logo. The login area for your staff and your sub agents can sit on your domain as well, so the people selling through you also see your brand rather than anyone else's. There are a few honest limits. Some documents are created by the airline or the hotel supplier and not by you, so those keep their own branding. An airline ticket will always show the airline, and a supplier voucher may show the supplier. When your customer is sent to a payment page, the name of the payment provider you have connected can appear for a moment. How far the look of the portal can be changed also depends on the plan you take, because some plans allow a fully custom design while others give you a ready made layout with your logo, colours and text dropped into it. Before you go live, settle on the web address you want to use and have a clear logo file ready, then run one test booking all the way through and read the emails your customer receives, so you can be sure every screen and document says exactly what you want it to say.

Question 2

Can I sell flights from low cost airlines on my portal as well as the bigger airlines?

Accepted Answer

Yes, low cost airlines can be sold alongside the bigger full service ones, although the two do not always behave the same way. Many flight connections now carry both, so your customer sees a low cost fare and a full service fare side by side and simply picks the one they want. Which low cost airlines actually appear depends on the suppliers you are connected to, because each supplier carries its own set of carriers and no single supplier carries every airline in the world. The main difference to expect is in what comes with the fare. A low cost airline usually sells a bare seat and then charges separately for baggage, seat choice and a meal, so the first price your customer sees looks lower but the final amount can rise once those are added. Some low cost carriers also handle changes and cancellations under their own rules rather than the usual airline rules, and a few of them do not allow a booking to be changed at all once it is issued. Payment and ticketing can work differently too. With some low cost airlines the booking has to be paid and confirmed at once with no option to hold it, and what comes back to you is the airline's own booking reference rather than a normal ticket number. That is decided by the airline and the supplier rather than by the portal, so it varies from one carrier to the next. Before you start promoting low cost fares, ask which of these carriers your suppliers cover on the routes you sell most, and check how changes and refunds work for each one.

Question 3

Will my customer get a hotel voucher they can show at the front desk when they arrive?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Once a hotel booking is confirmed through the API, the confirmation comes back with everything the hotel needs, and your portal turns that into a voucher your customer can download or receive by email. It normally carries the guest names, the hotel name and address, the check in and check out dates, the room type, what meals are included if any, and the reference the hotel or the supplier uses to find the booking. The voucher goes out in your own branding, with your agency name on it, and the supplier sitting behind the booking is not shown to your customer. The reference printed on it is usually the supplier's booking reference, because that is the one the hotel can actually look up in its own system. Your own internal booking number can sit alongside it, but it is the supplier reference that the front desk will ask for if there is any confusion. There are a few honest limits here. A small number of hotels only accept the voucher in the supplier's own format, so what your customer receives may look slightly different for those properties. If a booking is one that has to be requested rather than confirmed straight away, no voucher exists until the hotel accepts it, so nothing should be sent to the customer before then. Very occasionally the hotel takes a little while to see the reservation on its side, and the reference is what sorts that out. Before you go live, make one test booking on your portal and look at the voucher yourself, so you know exactly what your customers will be holding when they walk in.

Question 4

Can I keep track of how much money each of my sub agents owes me, or do I have to keep that on paper?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the software keeps a running account for every sub agent you sign up, so you do not have to keep it on paper. Each agent has their own wallet inside the portal. When you receive money from them you credit their account, and when they issue a booking the cost comes out of that balance automatically. The agent sees their own balance and statement when they log in, and you see all of your agents together from the admin side. You can also set a limit for each agent, so one is allowed to book only against money they have already paid you, while another one you trust can keep booking and settle later. If an agent runs out of balance, the portal stops them at the payment step instead of letting the booking go through, which saves you chasing the money afterwards. Refunds and cancellation charges pass back through the same account, so the balance stays correct on its own. What does not always happen by itself is matching up money that lands in your bank. When an agent transfers you money, somebody on your side usually has to confirm it before the balance goes up, unless your payment gateway is connected in a way that records the top up for you, and that depends on the gateway and on your plan. Your tax filing and your year end books still belong in accounting software, although you can normally export the agent statements and pass them to your accountant. Before you open your portal to sub agents, decide which of them you are comfortable letting settle later and which ones should pay you first, and set those limits on their accounts from day one.

Question 5

If I have a big group travelling together, can I book them all in one go through the flight API?

Accepted Answer

Not in one single booking once the group gets past the size an airline allows. Flight booking APIs follow the same rules the airlines themselves use, and most airline reservation systems only let a limited number of passengers sit on one ticket record. Up to that limit you can add every traveller in the same search and the same booking, and they will share one reference, one payment and one set of tickets. Above that limit the API will normally ask you to split the travellers across more than one booking. That works fine, and everyone still flies together as long as the fare still has seats left, but each booking gets its own reference. If you need the whole party tied to one reference, or you want the special fare and the longer payment deadline that airlines give to genuine groups, that is a group desk request at the airline and not something a normal booking API handles. Some suppliers offer a separate group service and some do not, so this depends on which suppliers are connected to your portal and on your plan. One thing to watch is that the price you see in a search is only held for the seats still selling at that level. A large party can use up the cheaper seats partway through, so the last few travellers may come out costlier than the first few, and the total you quoted can move before payment goes through. Before you promise anything to a group client, ask us which of your connected suppliers allows larger bookings and whether a group desk option is open to you, so you know in advance whether you are splitting the party or handling it off the portal.

Question 6

If an airline changes the timing of a flight my customer has already booked, will I be told about it?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you will be told, but how fast and how completely depends on the airline and on the supplier the ticket was issued through. These updates reach us from the supplier rather than from the airline directly, so we can only pass on what they send us. Some suppliers report a change on the same day the airline makes it, and others only show the new timing when the booking is read again. When a change does arrive, it sits against the booking in your panel so your staff can see the old timing next to the new one, and an alert can go to your team by email as well. What you should not count on is the airline writing to your customer. The airline normally deals with the agency that issued the ticket, so passing the news on to the passenger stays your job. Acting on the change is a separate matter. Accepting the new timing, moving the customer to another flight, or asking for a full refund because the change is a big one has to follow what that airline and that particular fare allow. Where the API supports the action, your staff can do it from the booking itself. Where it does not, it becomes a request to the supplier and you wait for their reply, which is worth telling your customer at the start so they are not expecting an instant answer. If you have customers travelling in the next few days, have one person look at the changed bookings every morning, and ask us which of your suppliers send these updates on their own so you know where you still need to watch by hand.

Question 7

If my customer wants to change the dates of a hotel booking they already made, can I do that through the hotel API?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes yes, but not always, and it depends on the supplier the booking came from. Some hotel suppliers accept a change request on a live booking through the API, so your staff can ask for different dates on the same room. Others offer no change option at all, and the only way to move a customer is to cancel the booking you have and make a fresh one for the new dates. What really decides it is the rate your customer booked. A refundable rate that is still inside its free cancellation period can usually be cancelled and rebooked without a penalty, although the new dates will be priced at whatever the hotel is charging for them now, so the amount can go up or down. A non refundable rate is a harder situation, because cancelling it normally means the money is lost and the hotel is under no obligation to move the stay for you. Your portal shows the cancellation terms that were saved with the booking, so your staff can read the room's actual policy and its deadline before promising the customer anything. Where the supplier does support an amendment, the request is sent and then waits for the supplier to accept it, so treat it as requested rather than confirmed until the reply comes back. A small correction to a guest name is often easier to get through than a change of dates, but that too is the supplier's rule and not something we can override. Open the booking in your portal, look at the cancellation deadline on the room, and then decide whether cancelling and rebooking is the cleaner option for your customer, or whether it is worth asking the hotel for a change first.

Question 8

Can I let other small travel agents sell through my portal with their own login and their own prices?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can let other agents sell through your portal, although how many logins you get and how much you can change for each one depends on the plan you are on. The usual way this works is that every agent you sign up gets their own login to the same portal. They search and book in the normal way, but they only ever see the price you decide to show them, not what you pay the supplier and not which supplier the fare came from. You set a separate markup for each agent, or for a group of agents, so someone who sends you a lot of business can be given a better rate than someone who only books now and then. On the money side, you normally decide whether an agent books against a balance they have paid you in advance or against a limit you allow them, and the portal stops them booking once that is used up. Every booking they make shows in your own reports and statements, and you can switch a login off at any time. The thing to be clear about from the start is that you stay responsible to the supplier for whatever your agents book, so a cancellation charge or a wrongly typed name is still yours to sort out. One honest limit is that some suppliers have rules about who their content may be resold to, and that is set in your contract with them rather than in the software. Before you promise anything to your agents, check your supplier contracts and ask which of your connected suppliers allow their content to be sold on this way.

Question 9

Can I decide how much I add on top of the supplier price, and can it be different for flights and hotels?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you set your own markup, and you can keep it different for flights, hotels and the other services you sell. The software takes the price the supplier gives, adds whatever you have told it to add, and shows your customer only the final price. Your own cost stays on the back office side, where the customer never sees it. Most portals let you choose whether the markup is a fixed amount or a percentage, and let you set it by service, by supplier, and often by route or by country as well. That means you can keep a thin markup on a busy sector where you are competing hard on price, and a wider one on a quiet sector where you are not. If you also sell through other agents, you can usually give each of them their own markup so your best agents get better rates. There are limits that are worth knowing about. Some airline fares come with rules about what may be shown or charged on top of them, and a few suppliers give you a net rate that already has their own commission inside it, so what looks like your margin may not all be yours. Taxes and fees are normally kept apart from the markup, and whether your markup is added before or after them is something you should set on purpose rather than assume. Once your portal is live, run a test search for each service you sell and check the final selling price against your supplier cost before you let your staff start booking, so you know the rules are doing exactly what you meant them to do.

Question 10

If a family books with children, will the hotel API give me the right price for the kids or do I have to work it out myself?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the hotel booking API will normally price the children for you, as long as you tell it how old each child is when you search. Hotel rates depend on who is sharing the room, so the search has a place for the adults and for the ages of any children with them. The rates that come back already include whatever that hotel charges for the children, which may be nothing at all, an extra bed charge, or a full adult rate if the child is above the hotel's own age limit. The ages matter more than most people expect. A child treated as an infant by one hotel may be treated as an adult by the next, because each hotel sets its own cut off. If your staff guess the ages or leave them out, the room is priced for adults only, and the hotel can ask your customer to pay the difference at the desk, or the supplier can refuse the booking because the guests do not match the ones you searched with. There are limits worth knowing. Not every room type takes children, so a family search usually returns fewer hotels than the same search for adults, and family rooms tend to sell out earlier. Where a supplier does not handle child ages well, the price may come back covering the adults only, and your portal should say so plainly rather than let the booking go through quietly. Before you start selling, run a few family searches on your own portal and check that the age boxes appear at search time and that the confirmed voucher lists every guest, children included.