Question 1

Can the hotel booking API give me guest reviews and ratings so my customer can judge a hotel before booking?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes yes, but this is one of the areas where suppliers differ the most, so you cannot assume every hotel in your portal will come with reviews. Where review content is included you usually get an overall guest score, the number of reviews it is based on, and often a breakdown by things travellers care about such as cleanliness, location, the staff and value. Some suppliers also send the written reviews themselves, with the date and the type of traveller. Keep in mind that this guest score is a different thing from the star rating, which is the official classification of the property and tends to come through on almost every feed. The limits are mostly commercial rather than technical. Review content is often licensed from a separate provider, so it may only be part of certain plans, and the supplier may set rules about how you display it, such as crediting where it came from or not mixing scores from different sources into one number of your own. Reviews are also not always available in every language, and a small or newly listed hotel may simply have none yet, which is not a fault in the feed. If reviews are important to the way your customers choose, ask which of your suppliers include review content and what the display rules are, then look at a mix of large chain hotels and smaller properties in your own portal to see how often a score actually appears.

Question 2

Can I work on my bookings from my phone when I am out of the office?

Accepted Answer

Yes, for most day to day jobs. Travel agency software is normally reached through a web browser, so you can sign in from a phone or a tablet while you are out and look up a booking, see what a customer has paid, send a quote again or answer a question about a flight time. Screens built for a desktop are narrower on a phone, so you will scroll more, but the information you see is the same information your team sees in the office. The heavier work is harder on a small screen. Running a fresh search and issuing a ticket, editing a long itinerary or reading through a report is far easier on a proper monitor, and some suppliers open their own page for payment or card details which can be fiddly on a phone. If your software offers an app as well as the website, the app usually covers the common jobs rather than every screen, so check which parts it actually includes. It is worth thinking about access when your staff use their own phones. Give each person only the permissions the job needs, make sure everyone signs out properly on a personal or shared device, and ask whether your plan lets you control who can sign in from outside your office, because that can depend on the plan you are on. The simplest next step is to sign in on your own phone and try the two or three things you most often need to do when you are away from your desk, so you know in advance which of them work comfortably and which are better left until you are back.

Question 3

Can the flight booking API book a trip where my customer flies into one city and comes home from another?

Accepted Answer

Yes, most flight booking APIs can build a trip where your customer flies out to one city and returns home from a different one. This is usually called a multi city or open jaw search rather than a return search, and you ask for it in a slightly different way. A return search sends one origin and one destination with two dates, and the supplier works out the journey home for you. A multi city search lets you send each leg on its own, so you can say your customer flies out to one city, then travels home from another city on a later date. The supplier then prices the whole journey together, which is often better for your customer than buying two separate one way tickets, because airlines publish fares built for exactly this kind of trip. What comes back does depend on the supplier behind the search. Some airlines and consolidators price these trips very well and give you one ticket for the whole journey, while others simply join one way fares together. Low cost airlines often have no through fare at all, so each leg ends up as its own booking with its own rules for changes and baggage. How many legs you can send in a single search can also be limited by the supplier, and a long, complicated routing usually takes longer to come back than a plain return. If you sell this kind of trip often, try a few of your usual routes as a multi city search and look at whether the result is one fare with one ticket or separate tickets, and read the change and cancellation rules for each leg before you quote your customer.

Question 4

Can the hotel booking API find hotels near a place my customer names, like a beach or a conference centre?

Accepted Answer

Yes, most hotel booking APIs can search around a point on the map, not only by city name. If you know where the beach, the conference centre or the hospital sits, you can ask for the hotels within a set distance of that point and get back the properties in that area, usually with the distance from it shown against each one. There is one step you have to handle first. The supplier expects a map position, so your search screen needs to turn the place your customer typed into that position, which is normally done with an address or map lookup service behind your site. Some suppliers also accept their own landmark or district codes, and those can be handy, but the lists differ from one supplier to the next, so searching around a map point is the method that tends to work everywhere. Be aware of what it cannot promise. The results are only as good as the address the supplier holds for each hotel, and while most are right, some sit a street or two away from where they really are, so a genuinely close hotel can be missed. The distance you see is measured in a straight line as well, not by road or on foot, so somewhere that looks close can still be a long way round. Suppliers may also limit how wide an area you can ask for. A sensible next step is to ask your supplier whether searching around a map point is available on your plan and how wide an area it allows, then try it on two or three of the landmarks your customers ask about most and check that the hotels you would expect actually come back.

Question 5

Can my travel agency software chase a customer who has not paid the balance for their trip?

Accepted Answer

Yes, it can. When you take a part payment you can record the amount still due and the date you need it by, and the software will send the customer a polite reminder on its own, so nobody on your team has to remember it. The reminders go out by email under your own company name, and on some plans you can also send them by WhatsApp or text message. You choose how many days before the due date the first reminder goes, and whether a second one follows if the customer still has not paid. If the customer pays by card through your own booking page, the balance is marked as settled and the reminders stop by themselves. There are two limits to keep in mind. The software only knows what has been entered into it, so if a customer sends money straight to your bank and nobody marks the payment as received, the reminder will keep going out and the customer will be annoyed. The other point is that your payment due date is your own, not the supplier's. An airline or a hotel may have its own ticketing or cancellation deadline that falls earlier, and the reminder to your customer has no effect on that, so you still need to watch the supplier date separately. A good way to start is to set a balance due date on your next booking, send the first reminder to your own address as a test, and check that the wording and your company details read the way you want them to.

Question 6

Can the flight booking API give me an e ticket I can email straight to my customer?

Accepted Answer

Yes, once a ticket has actually been issued the flight booking API sends back the ticket details, and those can be turned into a document you email to your customer. What comes back is usually the ticket number for each passenger, the airline's own booking reference, the flight times, the fare and the baggage that goes with it. Some suppliers hand over a finished document ready to forward. Others hand over the details only, and your own system builds the e ticket from them, which is the better option if you want your agency name and logo on it rather than the supplier's. There are two limits worth knowing. A ticket number only exists after the booking has been ticketed, so if you have only held or confirmed the seat there is nothing yet to send, and the customer should be given the booking reference in the meantime. Budget airlines often do not issue a ticket number at all, so what you send is a confirmation with the airline reference on it, which is what the airport will ask for anyway. How quickly the ticket details appear also depends on the supplier and the airline. Make a test booking on a route you sell often, look at exactly what the supplier returns, and check that your e ticket template picks up every field before you rely on it with a real customer.

Question 7

Can the hotel booking API send a special request to the hotel, like a late check in or a room on a high floor?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can send a special request with a hotel booking through the API, but it is worth knowing that it stays a request and never becomes a promise. When you make the booking you can usually pass a short note along with the guest details, asking for something like a late check in, a room on a high floor, twin beds instead of a double, or a quiet room away from the lift. That note travels from your booking to the supplier, and the supplier passes it on to the hotel. How much of it survives the journey depends on the supplier you are booking through. Some accept a free text note of a reasonable length, some only accept a short list of standard preferences that they have codes for, and a few strip out anything they do not recognise. Most suppliers expect the note in plain English, so writing it in another language is usually a waste. The hotel makes the final decision, and it makes it when your customer arrives, not when you book. A high floor or adjoining rooms are given only if the hotel has them free that day. Requests that cost the hotel money, such as an extra bed or an early check in, are usually treated as a chargeable extra and settled at the property. Anything that really matters, like a wheelchair accessible room, is safer to confirm with the hotel directly as well. Before you rely on this, ask your supplier which request fields they support and how long the text can be, then make one test booking and check the note appears on the confirmation you get back. Tell your customer it has been requested and not confirmed, so nobody is disappointed at the desk.

Question 8

Can the flight booking API search a few days either side of my customer's date so I can show them a cheaper day to fly?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in many cases, although how wide a spread you can look at depends on the supplier sitting behind the search. A flexible date search asks for the same route across a range of departure days instead of one fixed day, and hands back the lowest fare found on each of those days, so you can put a small calendar in front of your customer instead of a single result. Some suppliers offer this properly as part of their service, while others will only answer one date at a time. Where the supplier does not support it, the same effect can still be built up by running several ordinary searches behind the scenes and putting the answers together. That works, but it is slower and much heavier on the connection, so the window is normally kept to a few days on either side rather than a whole month. If your customer wants to compare a long stretch of dates, expect the page to take noticeably longer to fill. The thing to be careful about is that calendar prices are often drawn from cached or indicative fares rather than a live quote taken at that moment. They are there to point your customer towards the cheaper days, not to act as a promise. Once a date is chosen, the flight should be priced again properly before you take any payment, and the fare can move between those two steps. Check whether the suppliers connected to your account offer a flexible date search today, and if they do, agree with your team how wide a window you want to show so that searches stay quick for everyone using your site.

Question 9

Can my travel agency software keep a record of every enquiry that comes in, even the ones that never turn into a booking?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Good travel agency software treats an enquiry as a record in its own right from the moment it arrives, so it is saved whether or not the customer ever books. The enquiry sits in your system with the traveller's name, the dates and destination they asked about, who in your team picked it up, and the notes and quotes that followed. That matters more than most agencies expect. Once every enquiry is captured you can see how busy your team really is, which of your sources bring you the most interest, and how many of those enquiries end in a booking. When one does convert, the whole conversation stays attached to the booking, so anybody covering for a colleague can read back through what was promised instead of guessing. Be realistic about where the enquiries come from. Anything arriving through a connected channel, such as a form on your own website, can land in the system by itself. A phone call, a walk in, or a message on a personal account still has to be entered by a member of staff, and no software can record what nobody types in. Which channels can be connected for you depends on your plan and on how your site is set up, so it is worth asking before you assume a source is covered. The practical step is to agree a short set of reasons for a lost enquiry with your team, insist that everyone picks one when they close an enquiry off, and look at the results after a couple of months to see what is really costing you bookings.

Question 10

Will the hotel price I see in the search still be the same when I go to book it?

Accepted Answer

Not always, and it is better to know that before it surprises you in front of a customer. Hotel prices come from live availability that can move from one minute to the next as rooms sell and as the hotel changes its rates, so a price in a search result is the offer at that moment rather than a figure that is locked for you. That is why almost every hotel booking API has a checking step between the search and the booking. Before you take any money you send the chosen room back to the supplier, and it tells you whether that room and that price are still available or returns the new figure. A well built booking flow does this on its own and shows your customer the updated price before anything is charged. Small differences are common on busy dates, and also when the supplier quotes in one currency and your site sells in another and the rate has shifted. If the room has sold out completely the API will say so, the booking cannot go through at that price, and nothing is taken from your customer. The usual way forward is to offer the next best room in the same hotel, or the same hotel from a different supplier if you work with more than one. Keeping your search results fresh, instead of showing prices that were pulled a long time earlier, cuts down how often this happens. Check that your booking pages run that availability and price check right before payment, and agree with your staff what they will say to a customer when a price has moved.