Question 1

If I decide to stop using the software one day, can I take my customer and booking data with me?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the customer and booking records you build up belong to you, and you can take a copy away with you. Most of what an agency actually cares about, meaning the customer list, the booking history, the passenger details and the invoices you raised, can be exported as spreadsheet files that open in any ordinary program. You do not have to wait until you are leaving to ask for this, and it is sensible to pull a copy now and then while you are still trading. What comes out cleanly is the information that lives in your own account. Anything that really sits with a supplier will not travel in the same way. An airline booking reference, a hotel voucher or a ticket number is held by the airline or the hotel, so the export tells you the booking existed and what was in it, but the live booking itself stays with whoever issued it and has to be managed there. How much you can export at once, and how far back the records go, depends on your plan and on how long you have been trading with us. Large exports are usually split into batches so they finish reliably rather than timing out. Files attached to a booking, such as scanned passports or signed forms, are normally handled separately from the spreadsheet export, because they are documents rather than rows of data. If this matters to you, ask for a sample export covering a recent month, open it and check that the columns you would genuinely need are all there, and say so early if something you rely on is missing so it can be looked at long before you ever need it.

Question 2

Do the flight results I get from the API include the low cost airlines, or only the big full service carriers?

Accepted Answer

In most cases yes, low cost airlines do appear alongside the full service ones, but it helps to understand how they get there. Full service airlines are usually reached through the global distribution systems that agents have used for years. Many low cost carriers sit outside those systems and are connected directly instead, so whether a particular budget airline shows up in your results depends on which connections your supplier has switched on for your account. Because of that difference, the two can behave quite differently once a customer picks a fare. A low cost fare often has to be paid for straight away rather than held, it may come with fewer things included, and changes or refunds can be tighter and sometimes handled only by the airline itself. Baggage and seats are usually sold as extras rather than being part of the fare, so the first price on the screen can look cheaper than what the trip really costs. There is also the plain fact that not every budget airline is open to agents. A few of them sell only to the public and will not deal through agency channels at all, and no API can create a connection that the airline does not offer in the first place. The sensible next step is to ask which airlines are actually live for your account on the routes you sell most, then run a few test searches on those routes and compare the results with the airline's own site so you know exactly where the gaps are.

Question 3

Can I change a hotel booking after it is made, like the dates or the guest name, through the API, or do I have to cancel and book again?

Accepted Answer

Yes, some hotel bookings can be changed through the API, but many cannot, and which ones can depends entirely on the supplier and the rate your customer booked. Where a change is allowed, the API gives you a modification call. You send the booking reference along with the new details, such as different dates, a different number of guests, or a corrected guest name. The supplier then checks whether the room is still free on the new dates and at what rate, and answers with a fresh price. If the new dates cost more, the difference is collected. If they cost less, you may or may not see money come back, again according to that supplier's own terms. Plenty of rates, especially the cheaper ones that cannot be refunded, allow no change at all. For those the only route is to cancel, accept whatever penalty the policy carries, and make a new booking. Small corrections, like a spelling mistake in a guest name, are often treated more kindly than a date change, but even that is the supplier's decision rather than ours, and a few suppliers ask that such requests go through their own support desk instead of the API. So before you promise a customer that a stay can be moved, look at the change and cancellation terms the API returned at the time of booking and save them with the reservation. That way your staff can see at a glance which bookings are flexible and which are locked in, and nobody has to guess on the phone.

Question 4

Can I see reports on how my agency is doing, like which staff member sold the most or which destinations sell best?

Accepted Answer

Yes, travel agency software normally includes a reporting area so you can see how the business is doing without building a spreadsheet yourself. The usual reports cover bookings made over a date range, sales split by product type such as flights or hotels, sales by staff member, and which routes or destinations come up most often. In most cases you can filter by date and export what you see, so your accountant or your own team can work with the same numbers you are looking at. How deep the reporting goes depends on your plan and on what gets recorded at the time of booking. If a booking is entered by hand and nobody is tagged against it, it will not sit under the right staff member later, so the reports are only as good as the habits behind them. Anything that shows supplier commission also depends on the supplier passing that detail back, and not every supplier does, so a few of those columns may need to be completed on your side. Dashboards that refresh as bookings come in are common enough. Very custom reporting, such as combining your own offline records with portal data or matching your accounting categories exactly, is usually treated as a separate piece of setup work rather than something waiting for you on day one. A sensible next step is to write down the few numbers you actually look at each week, then ask to see those exact reports in a demo before you commit, so you know which ones come as standard and which would need building for you.

Question 5

Will my white label portal bring me customers from Google on its own, or do I still have to do my own marketing?

Accepted Answer

No, a white label portal will not bring you traffic by itself, and it is only fair to say that plainly. The portal gives people a good place to search and book once they arrive, but getting them to arrive is still your job, in the same way a shop window does not put people on the street outside. The reason is that search and results pages are built the moment a customer asks for them, from live fares and availability, so there is nothing fixed for a search engine to store and rank. Pages that do hold steady content, such as your home page, a destination page or questions and answers you write yourself, can be found in search over time, and those are the ones worth your effort. How much content you can add, and how much control you get over it, depends on your plan and on how your site is set up. The portal works best as the place people land rather than the place they discover you. Most agencies get their bookings from customers they already have, from social posts and messages, from ads pointing at a specific trip, and from being the agency people already call. Any of those can send someone straight into a search on your portal with the trip details already filled in for them. Before you launch, decide where your first visitors will come from, because a portal with nobody pointed at it will stay quiet no matter how good it looks.

Question 6

Can I get the airline booking reference and ticket number through the API as soon as a booking is made so I can send them to my customer?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can get both straight from the API, and you do not need to log into the airline site to find them. When a booking goes through, the reply from the API normally includes the airline booking reference, the short code your customer sees on their itinerary. The ticket number is slightly different, because it only exists once the ticket has actually been issued. With many low cost carriers, booking and ticketing happen in the same step, so the reference and the ticket number come back together. With content that comes through a global distribution system, ticketing is often a separate call, so the reference arrives first and the ticket number a moment later, once issuance is confirmed. This does depend on the supplier and on how your account is set up. A few suppliers return the reference immediately but hold the ticket number until their own issuance finishes, and now and then a booking sits in a manual queue on their side and takes longer. In those cases you read the booking again with the same reference and the number is there. Because of that, it is safer to save the reference against your booking record as soon as you have it, then fill in the ticket number when it arrives, rather than waiting for both before you store anything. Once you are connected, make a test booking in the sandbox and look at exactly which fields come back in the booking response, then ask your supplier whether ticket numbers are returned in that same response or need a separate retrieve call, so your confirmation emails never go out with a blank ticket number.

Question 7

Can I add bookings I made offline, like over the phone or by email, into the software so all my bookings are in one place?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can usually add offline bookings into travel agency software so everything sits in one place. A manual booking entry screen lets you type in the passenger name, the travel dates, the supplier, the cost you paid and the amount you charged your customer, and the system then treats that record much like a booking made through the portal itself. This matters most for the parts of your business the portal does not handle for you. A hotel you booked directly over the phone, a bus or rail ticket bought locally, a visa fee, a sightseeing tour arranged with a ground operator, all of these can be entered against the same customer file, so your invoice, your receipts and your reports show the whole trip instead of only the flight. There are limits worth knowing before you rely on it. A manually entered booking is only as accurate as what you type, because the system has no live link to that supplier, so it cannot refresh the status, pull a cancellation policy or process a refund for you. If the supplier changes something later you have to come back and update the record yourself. Which fields you get, and whether you can attach a supplier voucher to the record, also depends on your plan and on how your portal has been set up. The next thing to do is open the manual booking screen on your own portal and enter one past booking all the way through, then check how it appears on the customer invoice and in your sales report. If a field you need is missing, ask for it to be added before you start moving your older records across.

Question 8

Can I offer my white label portal in more than one language so my customers can book in the language they speak?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a white label portal can be shown in more than one language, and your customer normally picks the one they want from a small switch at the top of the page. Once they choose, the search screens, the buttons and the messages along the way appear in that language, and the choice stays with them while they finish the booking. The parts that come from us, which is most of the wording you see around the search and booking steps, can be translated for the languages you need. Anything you have written yourself, such as your terms, your about page or your cancellation notes, you supply in each language you want to offer, because only you know how you word those things for your own customers. There are limits it is better to know up front. How many languages you can switch on, and which ones are ready to use, can depend on your plan, so please check rather than assume. More importantly, the text that arrives from suppliers stays in the language the supplier sends it in, and that is very often English. Hotel descriptions, room names and fare conditions are good examples. If a booking hands your customer to a supplier for payment, that page will also be in the supplier's own wording. A sensible next step is to decide which one or two languages your customers really book in, make a list of the pages you wrote yourself so they can be translated, and confirm your plan covers the languages you have in mind.

Question 9

Can I book flights for children and infants through the API, or do I have to call the airline for those passengers?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can book children and infants through the API in most cases, as long as you send the correct passenger type and date of birth with the booking. When you search, you say how many adults, children and infants are travelling, and you say whether each infant has a seat of their own or is sitting on an adult's lap. The fares that come back are already priced for that mix, so the child fare or infant fare appears as its own line instead of you having to guess a discount. At booking you send each passenger's date of birth, and the airline checks the traveller is still inside the age band on the day of travel, not on the day you made the booking. There are limits worth knowing before you quote. Airlines set their own age bands, so a traveller counted as a child by one carrier can be charged as an adult by another and the same family will price differently on two options. An infant cannot travel without an adult on the same booking, and most airlines allow only one lap infant per adult. Children flying alone are usually not sold through an API at all, because the airline wants its own form and fee handled directly with them. Which passenger types your account can send also depends on the supplier behind that fare and on your plan. Before you quote a family trip, price it once in your test environment using the real ages, check the child and infant lines separately, and confirm with the airline if any traveller has a birthday falling close to the travel dates.

Question 10

Can I give each of my staff members their own login with different levels of access so not everyone can see all the bookings and reports?

Accepted Answer

Yes, most travel agency software lets you create a separate login for each person on your team and then decide what each one is allowed to see and do. The usual way this works is through roles. You set up a role such as booking agent, accountant or manager, you tick what that role is allowed to open, and then you put each staff member into a role. A booking agent might be able to search, quote and book, but not view your markup rules or your commission settings. An accountant might see invoices and payments but not be able to change supplier settings. A manager might see everything, including reports. Because it works by role rather than by person, adding someone later is quick, you just place them in the right role instead of setting up permissions from scratch. How far you can narrow things down depends on your plan and on how your portal is set up. Some setups let you restrict access right down to a single screen or a single supplier, others give you a smaller set of ready made roles to pick from. Separating one branch or office from another, so that staff in one office cannot see the other office's bookings, is usually possible too, but that is worth confirming for your own setup rather than assuming. Before you invite your team in, write down who genuinely needs to see pricing, commissions and customer payment details, and who only needs to make bookings. Then ask us to walk you through the roles available on your plan so we can match them to that list.