Question 1

Can I send my customer a price quote for a trip before they book, and turn it into a booking later if they say yes?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can put a quote together before your customer commits, and turn it into a real booking later. You search as normal, pick the flights or the hotel you want to offer, add your service fee, and save it as a quote under that customer's name. It goes out to them as a neat proposal with your agency name and logo on it, so it looks like your own document rather than a copy of a search screen. The one thing to be clear about is that a quote is not a held price. Airlines and hotel suppliers keep changing what they offer, so when your customer comes back a few days later and says yes, the system has to search again and the amount can come out different, or the room type you offered may have gone. Some fares can be held for a short period, but that depends on the airline or the supplier and on the plan you are on, so please do not promise your customer a locked price unless you have checked that it is genuinely on hold. All your quotes sit in one list, so you can see which ones are still open, follow them up, and see which of your staff sent them. When the customer agrees you can carry the quote through to a booking without typing the passenger details again. Whether it goes through in one step depends on the same option still being available at that moment. The best way to judge it is to build a quote for a trip you actually sell, send it to yourself first, and check that the layout, the wording and your fee all read the way you want before any customer sees one.

Question 2

Do the hotel results from the API come with photos and descriptions, or do I have to find all of that myself?

Accepted Answer

Yes, hotel results from the API normally come with photos and descriptions, so you do not have to go and collect that material yourself. Most hotel APIs split the information into two parts. The search call returns prices, room names and availability, and a separate content call returns the property description, the address, the star rating, the facility list and the image links. Because the descriptive material rarely changes, it is common to pull it once and store it on your own side, then refresh it every so often. That keeps your pages loading quickly and means your search results are not waiting on a second lookup before anything appears on screen. How good the material is depends entirely on the supplier behind each property. Some suppliers send a generous set of images with captions, room level photos and a clear write up in several languages. Others send a short paragraph, a few pictures of the lobby and nothing specific to the room your customer is actually booking. Independent and smaller properties tend to be thinner than chain hotels, and a description written for one market does not always read well for yours. You are also expected to follow the supplier's rules on how their images and text may be shown, so you cannot always crop, edit or reuse them freely. Before you launch, pick a sample of properties in the destinations you sell most and look at what actually arrives for them, then ask which content fields are included on your plan and whether you are allowed to add your own photos or wording where the supplier's version is too thin.

Question 3

Can I add my own pages to my white label portal, like an about us page, terms and conditions and a blog?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can add your own pages. A white label portal is not only search and booking screens, it also has room for the ordinary pages a travel business needs, such as an about us page, a contact page, terms and conditions, a privacy policy, a refund policy and a blog or news section. You write the text yourself and it sits on your own web address next to the booking pages, so a visitor moves between them without ever feeling they have left your website. The pages are edited from inside your admin area, in a simple editor where you type the text, add images and save. You do not need to write code or hire a web developer for everyday changes. Menus can usually be arranged so your pages appear in the header or the footer where you want them, and you can keep a page hidden while you are still working on it. How far you can go depends on your plan and on how the portal was set up for you. Plain text and image pages are straightforward. Something unusual, such as a page with a custom layout, a special form, or content pulled in from another system, may need help from our side, so it is worth asking before you promise it to anyone. The legal pages are your responsibility as well, because the terms, the cancellation rules and the privacy wording have to match your own business and the rules in your country. Make a short list of the pages you want ready on the day you go live, then check with us which of them you can build yourself and which ones need a hand.

Question 4

Can the software produce invoices and payment receipts for my customers that my accountant can actually use?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the software can produce an invoice and a payment receipt for every booking you make. Once a booking is confirmed, the details of the traveller, the service sold and the amount charged are pulled into a document you can download as a PDF or email to the customer straight from the booking screen, and the same document stays attached to the booking so you can find it again later. The parts that never change are set up once and then appear on everything you issue, such as your registered business name, your address, your tax or licence number, your payment terms and the way your invoice numbers run. If a customer pays in parts, the receipt shows what has been collected so far and what is still outstanding, which saves your staff from keeping a separate list on the side. There are honest limits here. This is your agency's own document, so it shows what your customer owes you including any markup or service fee you added, and it does not take the place of the airline ticket receipt or the hotel voucher from the supplier. If your country expects a particular tax layout or wording, the standard format may need to be adjusted first, and whether you can push these documents automatically into your accounting package rather than exporting them by hand depends on your plan. The sensible next step is to raise one invoice from a practice booking and show it to your accountant, so any wording or tax field they need is sorted out before you send a document to a real customer.

Question 5

Do I get hotels from all over the world through the hotel booking API, or only in certain countries?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a hotel booking API gives you properties in most parts of the world, but the depth of that coverage is not the same everywhere, so it is worth checking your own destinations before you promise anything to a customer. Hotel content reaches you through suppliers, and every supplier is stronger in some regions than others. A well known city will usually return a long list of properties, from international chains down to small guest houses, because several suppliers hold contracts there. A quiet town away from the main tourist routes may return only a few options, or none at all, simply because no supplier connected to your account has signed up the hotels in that place. That is not the software choosing what to show you. It depends on which suppliers are enabled on your plan and on what each of them has contracted. Because of that, the honest way to answer whether you can sell a particular destination is to search for it rather than assume it is there. If your business is built around one region or one country, tell us which one before you go live and we can look at whether the suppliers on your plan cover it properly or whether another supplier should be added. Adding one is often possible, though it can depend on your plan and on that supplier's own terms for new agencies. Before you start selling, run a few real searches for the cities, dates and types of property your customers ask about, and compare what comes back with what you would expect to find. That simple test will tell you more about your true coverage than any headline claim.

Question 6

Can I choose to show only the travel services I actually sell on my portal and hide the rest?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can choose which travel services show on your portal and hide the ones you do not sell. A white label portal is usually built as separate modules, so flights, hotels, holiday packages, transfers and sightseeing can each be switched on or off for your brand. If you only sell hotels and packages today, your customers will never see a flight search box, and your menu will show only the things you actually handle. What you can switch on depends on two things, your plan and the supplier behind each service. A module only works if there is a live supplier connection feeding it, and some of those connections need paperwork or approval before they can go live. So the honest answer is that hiding a service is possible straight away, while adding one may take a little time and may depend on what your plan covers. You are not locked in to the choice you make on the first day. Most agencies start with one or two services they know well, then open up the rest once their staff are comfortable, and turning a new module on later does not disturb the bookings you have already taken or the look of the rest of your site. Before you launch, ask which modules are included in your plan and which ones need a supplier agreement first, and check that any service you switch off is also taken out of your menus and home page so a customer is never sent to an empty search.

Question 7

Can I book a trip with more than two flights in it, like a customer flying to three different cities, as one booking through the API?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the flight booking API supports multi city trips, so a customer visiting three or four cities can usually travel on one booking instead of several separate ones. You send each leg with its own origin, destination and date, and the search comes back with fares that cover the whole journey. Keeping it as one booking is usually better for your customer, because the airline sees the trip as a single itinerary. How many legs you can put in one search depends on the supplier behind the results. Most sources allow a handful of legs in a single request, and a few limit it to fewer than you might expect. Mixing airlines across the legs is often possible, but not always, and when it is not you may get back results that cover only part of the route. Low cost airlines in particular tend to price each leg on its own rather than as one journey. It is worth knowing that a single multi city booking behaves as one unit later on. If your customer changes or cancels one leg, the airline rules for the whole ticket usually apply, not just the leg being changed. That can work in your favour on a proper connected itinerary, and against you when the legs were really separate trips that happen to be booked together. The practical step is to run the exact route your customer wants as a multi city search and see what comes back, then compare it against booking the legs separately before you quote them.

Question 8

Will someone train my staff on how to use the software, or do we have to work it out ourselves?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you will get help learning the software and you should not have to work it out on your own. Most plans include a guided walk through of the portal and the back office with someone from our team, plus written notes you can keep and share with your staff. How many sessions you get, and whether they are group sessions or one to one, depends on the plan you are on, so it is worth confirming that before you sign up. Training normally covers the everyday work your team will actually do, such as searching and booking flights and hotels, cancelling a booking, setting your markup, creating a login for each staff member, and pulling the reports you need at month end. If you have a team, it usually works better to train two or three people properly and let them show the rest of the office, because they can answer the small questions as they come up. There are honest limits. We can teach your staff how the software works, but not supplier rules, fare conditions or visa and documentation requirements, because those belong to the airline, the hotel or the local authority and they change without notice. If your developer is working directly with the API instead of using the ready made portal, what you get there is technical documentation and support for the developer, not classroom training for your counter staff. Ask what training is included in your plan before you commit, book the sessions for a quiet part of your week, and keep a practice account open so your staff can try bookings before they touch a real one.

Question 9

If a hotel cancels my customer's booking at the last minute, will I find out through the API or do I have to keep checking myself?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you will find out through the API, but how quickly depends on the supplier. When a property or a supplier cancels a booking that was already confirmed, the status of that booking changes on their side, and when your portal asks the API about the booking again it comes back as cancelled, usually with whatever reason the supplier has recorded. Some suppliers also push a message out the moment it happens, and where that is available the change can appear in your system without anyone going looking for it. Where it gets less tidy is that not every hotel supplier sends that message. Some only change the status quietly and wait for someone to ask. For those, the safest habit is to have your portal re check the status of upcoming bookings on a regular schedule, and to check more often for stays that are about to start. That way a quiet cancellation is picked up by your system rather than by your customer standing at the front desk. It also helps to be realistic about what happens next. The API can show you the cancellation and any refund the supplier has recorded against it, but it cannot make the property keep the room or pay anything towards the trouble. Putting the guest somewhere else is a fresh booking, made the normal way, and any money you are owed for the cancelled one follows the supplier's own rules. The next thing to do is to ask which of your hotel suppliers send live cancellation updates and which ones have to be checked, then set your re check schedule so it covers the ones that stay silent.

Question 10

Will the booking confirmations and vouchers my customers receive have my agency name on them, or will they look like they came from someone else?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the confirmations and vouchers your customers receive can carry your agency name, your logo and your contact details, so nothing they open points back to anyone else. These documents are built from templates inside the software, and each brand you run has its own set. You can normally change the logo, the colours, the wording of the message and the name your customer sees in their inbox, and you can add your own terms and cancellation notes at the bottom. Hotel vouchers and ticket layouts work the same way, so a voucher your customer prints at home reads as if it came straight from your office. There are limits that are fair to mention. The travel details themselves, such as the airline booking reference, the fare conditions or the hotel confirmation number, come from the supplier and cannot be reworded, because the airline or the property has to be able to read them at check in. On flights, the airline sometimes sends its own message to the passenger as well, and that one is outside your control. Whether your own address is used as the sender also depends on your plan and on the email records being set up for your web address, otherwise your messages can land in a spam folder. The sensible next step is to open the email and document settings in your admin area, make one practice booking to your own inbox, and check who it appears to come from and whether the logo and terms are the ones you want before you send anything to a real customer.