Question 1

Can the flight booking API save my customer's frequent flyer number so they still earn their miles?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can pass a customer's frequent flyer number through the flight booking API and it is sent on to the airline with the booking. The number goes in with the rest of the passenger details, next to the name and the date of birth, so you enter the airline code and the membership number at the moment you make the booking. If the airline accepts it, the number stays on the booking and the miles are credited to the customer after they have flown. There are a few things worth knowing before you promise anything. The airline has to recognise the programme you are entering, so a card from one airline will normally only earn on flights operated by that airline or by a partner airline in the same group. The name on the booking should match the name on the loyalty account, because most airlines will quietly drop a number that does not match. And a number sent this way is a request rather than a guarantee, so the airline can ignore it without telling you why. Whether the field is there at all depends on the supplier your portal is connected to. Some suppliers accept the number in the booking request itself, some only let you add it to the booking afterwards, and some low cost airlines do not carry loyalty numbers through the API at all. The suppliers switched on for your account, and the plan you are on, decide what you can send. If this matters to your customers, ask us which of your suppliers accept a frequent flyer number at booking, and get into the habit of checking the name on the loyalty card against the passport before you confirm.

Question 2

Can my travel agency software show my booking site and my customer emails in another language?

Accepted Answer

Yes, up to a point. The parts of the system that belong to you, such as the labels on your booking site, your email templates and the wording on your quotes and vouchers, can normally be set up in another language, and a customer can be shown the version that suits them. Anything you write yourself, like a tour description or a welcome note, you would supply in each language you want to offer. Where it becomes less straightforward is the content that comes from your suppliers. Hotel descriptions, room names, fare conditions and cancellation rules arrive in whatever language the supplier sends, and that is very often English only. Nothing in the middle can reliably rewrite those into another language without risking a mistake in a rule your customer is relying on, so you will usually see supplier wording in its original form even on a translated page. How much of this you get also depends on your plan and on how your site was set up, and adding a new language later is a piece of work rather than a switch, because every template and every piece of your own text has to be written again. Dates, names and address formats may also need attention so they read naturally to a local reader. A good next step is to write down the languages your customers actually ask for, look at one of your own emails and one hotel result side by side, and ask your provider what is covered for those languages and what you would need to supply yourself.

Question 3

Can my customers log in to my white label travel portal to see their own bookings?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a white label travel portal can give your customers their own login area where they sign in and see the trips they have booked with you. Once a traveller creates an account on your portal, the bookings they make are tied to that account. When they log back in they can usually see the trip dates, the passenger names, the confirmation number and the ticket or voucher, and print or download it again if they have lost the original email. That alone takes a lot of small requests off your team, because the customer can find their own paperwork at any hour of the day without ringing your office or waiting for someone to reply. What they can actually change from that screen is a separate question, and it depends on the supplier sitting behind each booking. Cancelling a room, moving a flight to another date or adding a bag is only possible online where the airline or the hotel supplier allows it through the connection your portal uses. Where they do not allow it, the portal will normally still show the booking and let the customer send a request instead, which comes through to your staff to handle by hand. A lot of agencies prefer it that way, because it keeps control of changes, and of any fee you charge for them, with your own team. If this matters to you, ask to see the customer account area on a demo portal, and check which of your suppliers allow self service changes before you promise your travellers they can do it themselves.

Question 4

Can my travel agency software show me which member of my team changed a booking?

Accepted Answer

Yes, most travel agency software keeps a record of who did what, and you can normally see it on the booking itself. Each time someone in your team opens a booking and changes something, the system writes a line saying which user made the change, what was changed and the date and time it happened. So if a hotel booking suddenly has a different guest name on it, you can open that history and see who typed it in and when. How much detail you get depends on the software and on the plan you are on. Some systems keep a full history on every record, including quotes, customer details and payment entries, while others only track the main booking actions such as create, amend and cancel. It is also worth knowing that changes that come from the supplier, for example when an airline moves a flight, will usually show as coming from the system rather than from a person, because nobody in your office made them. This record is only as useful as your logins are. If your whole team shares one account, every change will look like it was made by the same person and the history will not tell you anything. Give each member of staff their own login, even when they do the same job. Many systems will also let you control who is allowed to amend or cancel in the first place, which stops problems happening rather than just recording them afterwards. Ask your provider to show you the history on a real booking in your own account, and check that it covers the actions you most want to keep an eye on, such as cancellations, refunds and changes to a price.

Question 5

Can the flight booking API tell me what luggage is included in a fare and let me add extra bags?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases the flight booking API returns the baggage allowance along with the fare, and on many airlines your customer can add extra bags at the time of booking. When you search, each fare that comes back usually carries its own baggage details, such as how many cabin bags are allowed and whether checked baggage is included. Some airlines describe the allowance as a number of pieces and others describe it as a total weight, so the wording your portal shows will follow whatever the airline sends. It is worth showing that text to your customer exactly as it arrives, because a cheaper fare on the same flight is very often the one with no checked bag at all. Adding extra baggage is where it depends on the airline and the supplier. Many low cost carriers sell extra bags through the connection, so your staff can add them while booking and they are confirmed with the ticket. Other airlines only sell extra baggage on their own website or at the airport, and in those cases the API will not offer it. Allowances can also differ between the outbound and the return, or between two airlines sharing one ticket, so it is safer to read the allowance for each leg than for the trip as a whole. Before you go live, run a few test searches on the routes you sell most, check what baggage information actually comes back, and ask your supplier which airlines allow extra bags to be bought through the connection.

Question 6

Can the hotel booking API give me a voucher I can send to my customer to show at check in?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Once a hotel booking is confirmed, the hotel booking API gives you back everything a voucher needs: the hotel name and address, the guest names, the room type, the board basis, the check in and check out dates, and the supplier's confirmation reference. Most portals take those fields and produce a PDF voucher carrying your own agency name and logo, which you then email or message to your traveller. How much that voucher is worth at the front desk depends on the supplier. Some suppliers issue their own voucher document and expect the guest to present that one. Others are happy for you to generate your own, as long as the supplier reference is printed clearly on it. A few pass the reservation straight into the hotel's own system, and the guest is simply found by name. The safest voucher is one that shows the supplier reference at the top, so the hotel can trace the booking whichever way it reached them. Be careful about sending a voucher too early. If a hotel is on request rather than instant, the API will give you a reference before the hotel has actually agreed, and a voucher sent at that moment can leave your customer standing at a desk with no record of them. Wait until the booking status is confirmed. It is also worth checking whether your supplier allows their name to be hidden, as some contracts require the guest to see who the room was booked through. Before you send your first one, make a test booking, look at exactly which fields come back with the confirmation, and ask your supplier whether their own voucher must be used or yours is accepted.

Question 7

Can my travel agency software send my customer their trip details on WhatsApp instead of email?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most setups it can, and many agencies now use it because a message on a phone gets read far faster than an email does. The trip details sit on the booking already, so the message goes out from that record with the traveller name, the dates and the reference filled in, and whatever your staff send is saved against the booking so everyone can see what the customer was told. It works best for short, timely things. A confirmation after booking, a reminder the day before travel, a note that a flight time has moved, a nudge for a document you are waiting on. Longer paperwork such as a full itinerary or a voucher is usually better sent as a file or a link, because nobody wants to read several pages inside a chat window. There are real limits here and they are not ours to remove. Messaging on WhatsApp runs through the messaging platform itself, so you need an approved business account, and the first message in a conversation has to follow one of their approved templates rather than free text. Customers also have to have agreed to be contacted that way. Whether this is switched on for you depends on your plan and on that approval coming through, and it can take a little time to get in place. Decide which two or three messages you would actually want to go out automatically, then ask whoever looks after your system what is needed to get your business messaging account approved for them.

Question 8

Can I correct a spelling mistake in my customer's name through the flight booking API?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes, but not always, and it depends on whether the ticket has already been issued. A small spelling correction on a booking that is still unticketed is usually straightforward, while a name on an issued ticket is far harder to change. If the booking is made but not yet ticketed, the simplest route is normally to cancel it and book again with the name exactly as it appears on the passport. Nothing has been paid to the airline at that stage, so you are only risking the fare and the seats moving while you redo it. Some suppliers also allow the passenger details to be updated in place before ticketing, so it is worth checking whether that option is available to you before you cancel anything. Once the ticket is issued, it is the airline's rule that decides, not the API. Some airlines allow a correction of a couple of letters, either free or for a charge, when it is clearly a typing error rather than a different person. Others treat any change to the name as a new ticket, which means cancelling and reissuing under whatever the fare rules allow. Low cost carriers often handle this through their own process rather than through the connection, so the request may have to go to your supplier's support team instead of through the API, and an answer can take time. The safest habit is to check every name against the passport before you issue, since that is the one point where a correction costs you nothing. If a mistake has already gone out, raise it with your supplier the same day, because airlines tend to get stricter as the departure date comes closer.

Question 9

Can the hotel booking API price a room correctly when my customer is travelling with children?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a hotel booking API can price a room for a family, but only if it is told the children's ages before it searches. When you run the search you send the number of adults, the number of children and the age each child will be at the time of the stay. The supplier uses those ages to decide whether a child can sleep free in the beds that are already in the room, whether a cot or an extra bed is needed and charged for, or whether the child counts as an adult for that room. That is why the same family can come back with quite different results at two hotels on the same street. If the ages are left out of the search, you will usually get an adults only rate that will not match what the guest is asked for at the desk. Where it becomes less predictable is that each hotel sets its own rules and each supplier passes them on in its own way. Some hotels start treating a child as an adult at a younger age than others, some cap the number of people who may sleep in a room whatever their ages, and some accept the child but add a local charge on arrival that the API has no way to show you in advance. Family rooms and connecting rooms are also not always loaded for sale through the API even when the hotel has them, so your search may come back with fewer choices than the hotel's own website shows. Before you quote a family, put the real ages into the search instead of guessing, read the room description and the rate conditions that come back with each result, and for a trip that matters or a party that is unusual, confirm the sleeping arrangement with the hotel in writing as well.

Question 10

Can my customers pay by card on my white label travel portal with the money going into my own account?

Accepted Answer

Yes, card payments taken on your portal can settle into your own account rather than anyone else's. The portal is connected to a payment gateway that you hold in your own business name, so the customer pays on your website, under your branding, and the gateway pays the money out to your bank on its normal payout cycle. What is possible does depend on which gateways your portal supports and on the country your business is registered in. The widely used international gateways are usually straightforward, but a gateway that is popular only in your own market may need to be added first, and that work is not always covered by every plan. Opening the merchant account is a matter between you and the gateway or your bank, and they will want your company documents before they approve it. It also helps to keep two things separate in your mind. Collecting money from the traveller is not the same as paying the supplier. You may take the full amount from your customer on the portal while the airline or hotel is still being paid from a deposit or a credit line you hold with that supplier, so money coming in and money going out will not always fall on the same day. Refunds normally have to travel back through the same gateway the customer paid with, which can take a few working days. Before you fix a launch date, check which gateways your portal already supports in your market, and ask your bank or gateway what they need to open a merchant account in your business name.