Question 1

Will my website show hotels in small towns as well as the big cities?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you will get hotels in smaller towns as well as the big cities, but the choice will not be as deep and you should check your own key destinations before you promise anything to a customer. The hotels on a booking website come from the suppliers you are connected to, and every supplier has its own strengths. Some are strong across one region and thin everywhere else, and nearly all of them carry far more properties in cities and resort areas than in small inland towns. A search for a well known city will usually bring back a long list of properties, while a search for a small town may bring back only a few guest houses and roadside hotels, or sometimes nothing at all. When a particular region really matters to your business, the usual answer is to connect more than one hotel supplier, because where one is weak another is often strong, and the results can be shown together so your customer sees one clean list. Whether that is open to you depends on your plan and on the contracts you are able to sign with the suppliers themselves, so it is worth raising early rather than after you have gone live. The sensible thing to do next is to write down the places your customers actually ask for most often, search each of them on a test portal, and see what comes back before you settle on which suppliers to take.

Question 2

Can I sell budget airline flights on my portal alongside the normal airlines?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can sell budget airline flights on your portal next to the normal airlines, but it depends on which suppliers you are connected to. Low cost carriers do not sit in the same systems as full service airlines, so they usually reach your portal through a separate connection, or through a supplier who has already done that work. Once both are connected, your customer searches once and sees everything together in the same results. The difference shows up after the search rather than in it. Budget airlines often sell a bare fare and charge separately for bags, seats and meals, so their first price can look much lower than a full service fare that already includes those things. It is worth making that clear while the customer is choosing, so nobody is surprised at the airport. Many of these airlines also want payment at the moment of booking and will not hold a seat. Be honest about what you can service afterwards. A lot of budget airlines do not let an agent make changes through an API, so a date change or a name correction can mean going to the airline yourself, or asking your supplier to do it for you. Refunds can be slower, and some fares cannot be refunded at all. That is set by the airline, not by your portal. Ask your supplier which low cost carriers they cover on the routes you sell most, and what they can and cannot do for you after the ticket is issued, before you promise anything to a customer.

Question 3

If a customer starts a booking on my website but does not finish it, can I see it and follow up with them?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most setups you can see the bookings your customers started but never finished, and use them to follow up. A portal records the searches and the part completed bookings that pass through it, so instead of only seeing the sales that went through, you also get a view of the people who got close and then stopped. What you actually see depends on how far the customer went. Usually you get the route or the city, the travel dates, how many passengers and where in the process they dropped off, whether that was at the results page, the traveller details form or the payment step. If they typed a name, an email or a phone number before they left, that comes through too and gives your team something to work with. If they never entered any contact details, there is nothing to call, and the record is only useful as a pattern rather than as a lead. Be careful about two things. The fare or the room they were looking at may no longer be available or may cost something different when you call them back, because live prices keep moving, so treat it as a fresh quote rather than a saved deal. You also need to follow the marketing and privacy rules in your own country about contacting people who did not complete a purchase, and that responsibility sits with you and not with the platform. Have a look at where most of your drop offs happen before you start chasing individual customers, because a lot of stalled bookings at the same step usually points to something on that page rather than to a change of mind.

Question 4

Can I show my customer how much baggage is included in the fare and let them add an extra bag while they book?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases. The baggage allowance comes to your portal from the airline along with the fare, so your search results and your booking page can show whether cabin and checked bags are included before your customer pays anything. Because the allowance travels with the fare and not with the route, two seats on the very same flight can carry different baggage, and the cheapest option on the page is often the one that includes the least. Selling an extra bag during the booking is a separate thing, and here the honest answer is that it depends on the airline. Some airlines allow extra baggage to be sold at the time of booking, and where that is the case your customer can choose it on your portal and pay for it together with the ticket. Others only sell it afterwards on their own website or at the airport counter. Your portal can only offer what the airline itself allows through the connection you are using. Budget airlines behave differently again. With them a checked bag is normally a paid extra rather than something included in the fare, so it matters that your booking page says so clearly. If it does not, your customer will assume a bag is included and will come back to you unhappy after being asked to pay at the counter. Before you go live, run a few test searches on the airlines you sell most often and read what your booking page tells the customer about bags, then ask your supplier which of those airlines accept baggage added at the time of booking.

Question 5

Can I change a hotel booking after it is confirmed, like moving the dates or correcting the guest name?

Accepted Answer

Yes, many hotel bookings can be changed after they are confirmed, but not every one of them, and how it works depends on the supplier and on the rate your customer booked. Some hotel suppliers allow a change request to be sent straight from your portal, so you can ask for new dates, an extra night or a corrected guest name and get an answer back without phoning anyone. Other suppliers do not offer changes at all through their connection. In that case the only way to move a booking is to cancel the old one and make a new one, which means the price you had is gone, the new price may be higher or lower, and the room you wanted may no longer be free. The rate itself matters just as much. A room booked on a flexible rate that is still inside its free cancellation period is usually easy to change. A non refundable or specially discounted rate is often locked, so a change is either refused or treated as a cancellation with a charge. Small things like fixing the spelling of a guest name are normally accepted, but replacing one guest with a completely different person is usually counted as a new booking. Before you promise anything to your customer, open the booking in your portal and check the rate rules and whether a change option is shown for that supplier. If no change option appears, treat it as cancel and rebook, and tell your customer what that will cost them before you touch it.

Question 6

Can my customers log in to my website to see the bookings they have already made with me?

Accepted Answer

Yes, your portal can give each customer their own login area where they can see the bookings they have made with you. When someone books, an account is created against the email address they used, and from then on they can sign in and see their trip list without having to email or call your office for a copy of anything. Inside that area a customer normally sees the booking reference, the passenger or guest names, the travel dates and the current status of the booking, and they can view or download the ticket or the hotel voucher again with your branding on it. This cuts down a lot of the small requests your staff deal with every day, because the customer can find their own paperwork at any hour. Be aware of the limits. Seeing a booking is one thing, changing it is another. Most portals let the customer raise a cancellation or amendment request from their account, but whether that goes through on its own or lands with your team to action depends on the supplier behind the booking and on the rules of the fare or the room. Bookings you made over the phone or directly with a hotel will only appear there if you enter them into the system yourself, and a booking made as a guest, without signing in, may not attach to the account unless the email address matches exactly. Before you promise this to your customers, sign in as a test customer yourself and check that a past booking, a ticket and a voucher all appear the way you expect, and decide which requests you want the customer to be able to raise on their own.

Question 7

Can I let my customers book a flight and a hotel together as one package on my portal?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a white label travel portal can usually sell a flight and a hotel together as one package, but how neatly it works depends on which suppliers sit behind your portal and what your plan includes. In practice your customer searches once, picks a flight and then a hotel from the results, and pays for both in a single payment. The portal adds your markup on top of what the suppliers send, and it can be set so the customer sees one total for the trip rather than the flight and the hotel priced separately. They get one booking reference from you, and behind that sit the airline booking and the hotel booking, each with its own confirmation number, which your team can see in the back office. The honest limits are worth knowing before you promise anything. The package is still two bookings underneath, so the cancellation rules, the change rules and the refund timing follow each supplier separately. A hotel may allow a free cancellation while the flight is already non refundable. Some suppliers and some low cost airlines do not allow their fares to be bundled or hidden inside a package price at all, so what you can offer depends on the contracts and connections you have. If packaging matters to your business, check with us which of your connected suppliers permit it and how you want the price shown, then test a full package booking end to end before you put it in front of customers.

Question 8

If my customer cancels a flight, can I do the cancellation and the refund myself on my portal?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can cancel a flight ticket from your own portal and start the refund without emailing anyone, but how much comes back, and how quickly, depends on the airline and on the fare you sold. When you cancel a booking, the request goes to the airline through the same connection that issued the ticket. The airline decides the refund based on its own rules for that fare, so a cheap promotional fare may return very little or nothing, while a flexible fare may return most of what was paid. Your booking screen shows you the cancellation charge before you confirm, so you can tell your customer what to expect instead of guessing. Some cancellations cannot be done automatically. Low cost airlines often handle refunds on their own systems and on their own timelines, and tickets that are partly flown, already checked in, or past the departure time usually need a person to look at them. In those cases your portal still records the request and it is followed up with the airline, so the cancellation happens, just not in the same minute. The money itself moves in two steps. The airline releases the refund first, and only then can it be passed back to your customer's card or to your credit balance, which is why a refund can show as approved on your side well before it reaches a bank account. Before you sell, read the fare rules shown with the search result and tell your customer plainly what is refundable, and always check the cancellation charge on the booking screen before you confirm.

Question 9

Can I stop the same hotel showing up twice when I connect more than one hotel supplier?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can, but it takes some setting up and it is never perfect. When two suppliers sell the same property, each one sends it with its own internal code, and often with a slightly different name and address, so your website has no way of knowing on its own that they are the same building. The usual fix is hotel mapping, where the properties from each supplier are matched to one master list, so the hotel appears once in your search results and the best rate sits behind it. How well this works depends on the data your suppliers send. Properties with a well known chain name and a clean address match easily. Small guest houses, apartments and hotels that have changed name recently are the ones that slip through, and those are the duplicates your agents will notice first. Mapping is something you keep reviewing over time rather than finish once, so expect to correct a few matches as you go. You also have a choice about what happens after a hotel is matched. You can show only the cheapest rate and hide the rest, or you can show one hotel with each supplier's rates listed inside it, which agents often prefer because they can compare the cancellation terms before they book. Which of these you can use depends on your plan and on what each supplier's API actually returns. Before you connect a second hotel supplier, ask us to check how much of their property list can be matched to what you already have, and decide whether you want duplicates merged quietly or shown side by side.

Question 10

Can I get a report showing my sales and see which of my staff or sub agents brought in the most bookings?

Accepted Answer

Yes, travel agency software normally has a reports area where you can see your bookings over a chosen period and who made each one. Because every person who books has their own login, the system knows which staff member or which sub agent created a booking, so you can group your sales by person, by product such as flights or hotels, or by date range. How much detail you get depends on what the portal actually holds. If you set your markup and your fees inside the system, the report can show you what the customer paid and what you earned on top of the supplier fare. If you agree a special rate on the phone, or take money outside the portal, that booking will not show in your figures unless someone enters it into the system. Refunds and cancellations can also take a little while to settle on the supplier side, so a very recent report may not be the final picture. Most systems let you filter by dates and download the result to a spreadsheet so your accounts person can work with it. Whether you also get a live dashboard on your home screen, or custom reports built to your own layout, usually depends on the plan you are on, so it is worth asking before you assume it is included. When you look at a demo, make two or three test bookings under different logins and then open the reports section yourself, so you can see the filters, the columns and the export before you decide.