Question 1

Can I cancel a ticket through the flight booking API if I issued it by mistake?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can, as long as the request goes in quickly and the airline allows it. A ticket issued in error can usually be voided, which means it is treated as though it was never sold and the money comes back without a penalty. That option only stays open for a short window after issue, and once it closes the ticket has to be cancelled and refunded instead, under the fare rules that applied when you booked. In practice you send the void or cancellation request through the API using the booking reference you got when the ticket was issued. The API passes it to the supplier and returns a status telling you whether the request was accepted, rejected or still being processed. Some suppliers act straight away, others queue it and confirm a little later, so your staff should read the status that comes back rather than assume the ticket has gone. Whether voiding is possible at all depends on the supplier and the airline behind the fare. Many full service carriers allow it, some low cost carriers do not, and a few suppliers only accept a request that their own team handles first. Anything deducted is set by the airline and the fare, not by your portal, so the same mistake can cost nothing on one ticket and carry a penalty on another. Ask your supplier which airlines they can void for you and how long that window stays open, and make sure your staff check the fare rules shown at the time of booking before they issue.

Question 2

Can the hotel booking API show me the same hotel from more than one supplier so I can offer the better price?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases it can, but how well it works depends on the hotel content sitting behind your API. Every supplier uses its own hotel codes, so the same property can arrive under slightly different names and addresses. Matching those together into one property is called mapping, and it is done by comparing the name, the address, the map coordinates and other details. Where the match is confident, your portal can show the hotel once and put the better of the rates it found in front of your customer. Where the match is less certain, the safer behaviour is to leave the properties separate rather than merge two hotels that only look alike. You may then see what looks like a duplicate in your results. Well known city hotels and chain properties usually map cleanly, while small guest houses, apartments and recently added properties are the ones most likely to be missed. It is also worth remembering that the cheaper rate is not always the one to sell. Rates for the same room can differ in whether breakfast is included, whether they can be cancelled, and whether the guest pays you now or pays at the hotel. Compare the room name and the conditions next to the price before deciding which supplier to book through, and check whether your plan lets you decide which supplier should win when two rates are the same. If you are about to add another supplier, ask for your hotel mapping to be reviewed first, then run a few searches in the cities you sell most often and see how the results look before you go live.

Question 3

Can I give other travel agents their own login to book through my white label travel portal?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can give other travel agents their own login so they book through your portal instead of coming back to you by phone or email every time. This is usually called a sub agent or B2B setup, and it gives each agent a separate username, their own list of bookings and their own record of what they have sold. You stay the owner of the portal and of the supplier relationships, while they work inside the site you control. What each sub agent can see and do is normally up to you. You can decide which products they are allowed to sell, such as flights only or flights and hotels together, and you can set the markup or commission that applies to their bookings so the price they see already includes your margin. You can also switch an agent off if they stop working with you, and their past bookings stay on your records. How they pay you is the part worth checking early, because it varies. Some setups let a sub agent hold a credit balance with you that goes down as they book, while others ask them to pay for each booking as they make it. Which of these you can offer depends on the plan you are on and on what your payment provider and your suppliers allow, so it is better to confirm it than to assume it. The sensible next step is to write down how you want your agents to pay you and what you want them to be able to sell, then ask whoever manages your portal to confirm that both can be set up the way you have described.

Question 4

Can the flight booking API book a ticket for a baby travelling on a parent's lap?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a flight booking API can usually book a baby who travels on a parent's lap, as long as the airline and the supplier behind that fare support it. The infant is sent with the search as a separate passenger type, so the fare that comes back already accounts for them rather than being worked out afterwards. You will normally need the baby's full name and date of birth at the time of booking, and a passport for international travel, because the airline checks the age against the travel date. There are real limits worth knowing before you promise this to a customer. The airline decides the infant fare and the taxes that go with it, so it varies from one airline to another and it is not always a simple share of the adult fare. Some suppliers and some low cost carriers do not return infant pricing through the API at all, and those bookings have to be finished with the supplier or the airline directly. One adult can normally carry only one lap infant, and a baby who needs a seat of their own is booked as a child instead. If the booking goes through, the airline usually issues the infant as its own ticket tied to the adult, and your software should show both on the same booking so your staff are not chasing two records. Remember too that a baby close to the airline's age limit on the way out may be over it by the return date, and the airline will treat that as a child fare. Ask your supplier which of your airlines return infant pricing through the API on your plan, then run a live search with an infant before you advertise it, so you know what your staff will actually see.

Question 5

Can my white label travel portal still sell if one of my suppliers stops responding?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases your white label travel portal keeps selling even when one supplier stops responding, because the portal asks several suppliers at the same time and shows whatever comes back within the time it is allowed to wait. If one of them is slow or offline, the results from the others still appear, and your customer usually sees a shorter list of options rather than an error page. What you do lose while that supplier is unavailable is its own rates and its own content, so a hotel or a fare that only that supplier sells will simply not be there until it recovers. How often this happens is down to the supplier, not to the portal, and it is one of the reasons agencies who sell heavily into one destination like to have more than one source of supply for it. There is an important difference between the search stage and the booking stage. If a supplier fails while a customer is completing a booking, that booking cannot be confirmed with them, and the portal will say so plainly and let the customer choose another option rather than show a confirmation for something the supplier has not actually confirmed. If steady availability matters to your business, it is worth looking at which of your suppliers cover your busiest destinations and making sure at least two of them do, so a quiet spell from one is never a quiet spell for your portal.

Question 6

Can my travel agency software show prices in my own currency when the supplier quotes in a different one?

Accepted Answer

Yes, travel agency software can normally show prices in the currency you and your customers work in, even when the supplier quotes in another one. The way it usually works is that the supplier returns the fare or the room rate in its own currency, and your system converts it before the price is displayed. Some setups use a rate that the software refreshes on its own, and others let you set the rate yourself so you stay in control of what your customers see. You can normally also add a small buffer on top of the converted amount, so that a shift in the rate between the search and the payment does not eat into what you earn. There are limits worth knowing. The currency your customer is charged in is not always the currency the supplier bills you in, so your settlement can still happen in the original currency, and your bank may apply its own rate and charges on top. Some suppliers also insist that the booking is paid in their currency, which means the converted amount your customer sees is only a guide until the payment actually goes through. How many currencies you can offer, and whether conversion is available at all, depends on the supplier, the API and the plan you are on. It is worth deciding early which currency you want as your base one, then checking with your payment gateway that it accepts every currency you plan to display, because a converted price is only useful if the money can be collected the same way.

Question 7

Can the flight booking API hold a seat for my customer while they make up their mind?

Accepted Answer

Yes, on some airlines, though not on all of them. The flight booking API can create a reservation without paying for it straight away, which most people call putting a booking on hold, and the airline then gives you a deadline by which the ticket has to be paid for and issued. If that deadline goes by with no payment, the airline cancels the reservation by itself and the seat goes back on sale. The length of the hold is decided by the airline and not by your agency. It can be anything from a few hours to a couple of days, and it usually gets shorter the closer you are to the departure date. On very cheap fares, and during busy travel periods, there may be no hold offered at all. Most low cost airlines do not allow it either, because their fares are meant to be paid for at the moment of booking. It is also worth knowing that a hold protects the seat but does not always protect the price. Taxes and airline surcharges can be worked out again when the ticket is finally issued, and if the fare your customer chose sells out in the meantime, the airline may ask for the difference. It is safer to treat a hold as breathing space for your customer to decide, rather than as a locked in price. Check with your supplier which airlines offer a hold on your plan, and make sure your staff can see the payment deadline on every held booking so that nothing quietly cancels itself while they are waiting for the customer.

Question 8

Can the hotel booking API tell me the last date my customer can cancel without being charged?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases the hotel booking API returns a cancellation deadline alongside each room rate, so you can see the last date and time a booking can be cancelled free of charge before your customer pays anything. That information comes from the hotel or the supplier rather than from us, so how much detail you get varies. Some rates come back with a clear free cancellation date and time. Some come back with a penalty that changes as the stay gets closer, such as one night charged after a certain date. Some rates are non refundable from the moment they are confirmed, and the response will say so. The deadline is usually given in the hotel's local time, which matters when your customer is booking from another country, because a deadline that looks like the end of the day may already have passed where the hotel is. It is worth putting that deadline in front of your staff and your customers instead of leaving it buried in the response. Most portals show it on the room result, again on the review page before payment, and once more on the confirmation email, so nobody has to ring the hotel to ask. If your software stores the deadline with the booking record, you can also have it warn your staff shortly before the free cancellation window closes. Ask your supplier which cancellation details their hotel content includes, and have your developer display the deadline in the hotel's local time next to every rate, so your team always knows where they stand.

Question 9

Can the flight booking API give me the airline's own booking reference so my customer can check in with the airline?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases the flight booking API returns the airline's own booking reference once the reservation is confirmed, and you can pass that on to your customer for check in. It helps to know that a booking usually has more than one reference. There is the reference your own system creates so your staff can find the booking, and there is the airline reference, a short code of letters and numbers that the airline holds in its own records. Airline websites and airline apps ask for the airline one, together with the passenger surname exactly as it appears on the ticket. Most agencies store both against the booking and print the airline reference on the confirmation they send out, so the customer has it in hand when check in opens. There are a few things to be honest about. When a journey uses more than one airline on separate tickets, there can be a separate reference for each airline, and the customer may have to check in with each one in turn. The point at which the airline reference becomes usable can also vary, because with some airlines it only works on their site after the ticket has been issued rather than at the moment the seats are held. Exactly what is returned, and how quickly, depends on the airline and on the supplier connection behind your account. The next thing to check is whether your booking confirmations and your portal already show the airline reference alongside the lead passenger surname, and if they do not, ask for it to be added so your staff are not looking it up by hand every time a customer calls.

Question 10

Can I give different members of staff different levels of access in my travel agency software?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most travel agency software you can decide what each member of staff is allowed to see and do. Access is usually set through roles, so a counter staff member might be able to search and book, a manager might also see margins and reports, and only an owner or administrator can change settings, add new users or view the full financial picture. Roles matter most around money and customer records. You can normally hide what your agency earns on a booking from staff who only need to serve the customer, and you can limit who is able to issue a refund, cancel a confirmed booking or change a quoted price. If you have more than one branch or team, you can often restrict people to their own bookings and enquiries, so they only work with what belongs to them. Be honest with yourself about how much detail you need, because this varies. Some systems give you a small set of fixed roles, while others let you switch individual permissions on and off for each person, and the more flexible option may sit on a higher plan. Anything controlled by a supplier, such as who is permitted to issue a ticket on a particular airline account, follows that supplier's rules rather than your software settings. Before you set this up, write down who in your team genuinely needs to touch money, cancellations and settings, then ask your provider to walk you through the roles screen so you can check it matches that list.