Question 1

Can I connect my travel agency software to my accounting system so my team does not have to enter every booking twice?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can link your travel agency software to your accounting system so a booking only has to be entered once, although how smoothly it works depends on which accounting package you use and what your plan includes. The usual arrangement is that every confirmed booking creates a record holding the supplier cost, the selling price, your markup and any tax, and that record is passed across to your accounts as a sales invoice with a matching supplier bill. Some packages have a ready made connection that sends this over as soon as the booking is made. Where there is no ready made connection, you can normally export the same information as a file on a regular schedule and import it, which still saves your team from typing anything twice. It is worth being clear about the limits before you plan around this. Not every accounting package can be connected directly, so that is something to confirm for the one you use. Cancellations, amendments and refunds usually need a credit note rather than a simple correction, and if you sell in more than one currency you will want to agree which exchange rate is used, so that your accounts and your booking reports do not slowly drift apart from each other. The next step is to tell us which accounting package you use and who looks after your books, so we can check whether a direct connection already exists for it or whether a scheduled export is the better fit for the way you work.

Question 2

Can I show my customer the cancellation policy and the free cancellation date before they pay for a hotel?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in almost every case you can show both before your customer pays. Most hotel booking APIs send the cancellation terms along with the room price, either in the search results or at the pricing step just before payment, so your portal can display the free cancellation date on the room card and repeat it on the payment page and on the voucher. How much detail you get depends on the supplier. Some send a clear deadline together with the amount that would be charged after it, some send only a short sentence of plain text, and non refundable rates simply state that nothing comes back at any stage. Treat the policy as belonging to the exact rate your customer picked, not to the hotel itself, because the same hotel on the same night can offer a flexible rate and a cheaper non refundable one. Two things catch agents out. The deadline is normally in the local time of the hotel, so a cancellation that looks like it was made in time from your side can still arrive late at the property. The terms are also fixed at the moment of booking, so rely on the policy stored with that booking rather than looking up the live rate again weeks later, because the hotel may have changed its terms since. Before you go live, make one test booking on a flexible rate and one on a non refundable rate, and check that what your customer sees on screen matches what the supplier sent, and that the same wording reaches the voucher and your own booking record.

Question 3

If my customer's card is charged but the booking does not go through, what happens to their money?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the money comes back, but it is not always instant and how quickly depends on your payment gateway and on the supplier. A card payment and a booking are two separate events, so one can succeed while the other fails. When that happens your portal normally keeps the payment as a failed or unmatched transaction, with no ticket or voucher issued against it. That record is what proves the charge exists and it is what you use to chase the refund, so the first thing to do is find the transaction rather than assume nothing happened. What happens next depends on where the booking broke. If it failed before anything was confirmed with the airline or the hotel, the amount can usually be voided or returned to the same card without the supplier being involved at all. If the supplier had already accepted the booking and then rejected it, or the fare changed at the last moment, the release has to come from the supplier side and that takes longer. Many gateways can be set to reverse an authorisation automatically when a booking does not complete, and that setting is worth turning on if yours offers it. Timing is the part nobody can control. Even when the refund is released the same day, the customer's bank decides when it shows on their statement, and it is common for that to lag by several working days. Tell the customer this plainly at the time, because most complaints come from the silence rather than the wait. Ask your payment provider whether automatic reversal is switched on for your account, and get into the habit of checking your failed payments report at the end of each day so nothing sits there unnoticed.

Question 4

Will my customer's frequent flyer number and meal request actually reach the airline when they book on my website?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases both are sent along with the booking, although whether they are honoured rests with the airline rather than with your website. A frequent flyer number is normally accepted at the time of booking. Your portal collects the airline and the membership number from the passenger, passes it into the reservation, and the airline matches it against the member account. Two things commonly go wrong here. The name on the ticket has to match the name held on the membership, so a shortened first name or a missing middle name can break the match, and some cheap promotional fares earn nothing at all no matter which number is attached. When the miles do not show up, the passenger can usually claim them from the airline afterwards using the ticket number. Meal choices, wheelchair assistance and similar needs go across as special requests. They travel with the booking to the airline, but they remain requests. Most airlines confirm a special meal quietly and contact you only when they cannot provide it, and several low cost airlines will not take meal requests through the booking at all, because on those flights food is sold separately as a paid extra. A request added very close to departure can also miss the catering cut off. Ask your supplier which special request types each of your airlines accepts, and make clear to your customer that a request is passed on rather than guaranteed, so that nobody is caught out at the airport.

Question 5

Can I search for a room for a family with children and be sure the children are included in the price?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can search with children as well as adults, and the price that comes back should cover them, but only when the ages are sent correctly. A hotel booking API asks for the age of each child at the time of the stay, not simply how many children there are, because every hotel sets its own rules about who stays free, who needs an extra bed and who is counted as an adult. The room rate you receive is worked out from those ages, so they matter as much as the dates. That means your search form needs an age box for each child and your staff need to fill it in honestly. A child entered as younger than they really are may come back cheaper, and the hotel will not honour that at the desk, so your customer ends up paying the difference on arrival and blaming your website. Some suppliers also limit how many children can share one room, or will not sell a room where a child is listed without an adult in the same room. There are limits worth knowing. What counts as a child changes from hotel to hotel and from country to country, and some suppliers send back only a total for the room without spelling out the extra bed or breakfast charge for the child. Where the supplier does give you that breakdown, show it on the page. Where it does not, the safest wording is that the room covers the guests and ages you entered. Before you start selling family rooms, run a test search on your own portal with a child of two or three different ages and check that the room options and the price change the way you would expect, then ask your supplier how ages are counted for the stay dates.

Question 6

Can my website show prices in another currency and language for customers living abroad?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases a white label travel portal can show more than one currency and more than one language, but how far that goes depends on your supplier and your plan, so it is worth checking the detail before you promise it to a customer. Currency usually works by conversion rather than by the supplier quoting you directly in the currency your customer wants. The airline or hotel returns the fare in its own selling currency, and your portal converts it for display using a rate that you or your provider set, with the option to add a little margin so a moving rate does not eat into your profit. The actual charge still settles in whatever currency your payment gateway is set up for, so a customer paying from abroad may see a small difference on their card statement and their own bank may add a charge on top. Language is a little different. The wording that belongs to your site, things like the search boxes, the buttons, the emails and the terms, can normally be translated and switched by the visitor. Content that arrives from the supplier, such as hotel descriptions, room names, fare conditions and cancellation rules, usually comes through in English only, so parts of the page can stay in English even when the rest is translated. Before you turn this on, ask your provider which currencies your payment gateway can actually settle in, where the conversion rate comes from and how often it refreshes, and run a test booking in the currency and language you plan to offer so you can see exactly what your customer will see.

Question 7

Can I give my staff their own logins and stop a junior agent from seeing everything?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can. Almost all travel agency software is built around staff logins with roles, so you decide what a junior agent sees when they sign in and what stays hidden. You create one login per person, put that person into a role such as counter staff, accounts or manager, and the system then shows each of them only the screens their role allows. In practice the things people most often hold back are the money screens and the supplier settings. A junior agent can be allowed to search, book and send vouchers while the profit on each booking, the markup rules, the credit limits for sub agents and the payment gateway settings stay with you. You can usually also limit a person to their own bookings or to their own branch, so one office cannot see what another office is selling. How far that control goes depends on the software and on the plan you are on. Some systems let you switch permissions on and off item by item, others give you only a few fixed roles that you cannot change. Anything that touches your supplier or API credentials is best kept to one or two trusted people, whatever the system allows. Before you add your team, write down each person and the one thing you would not want them to see, then open the users or roles screen and check that the software can actually block it. Also switch off a login the same day someone leaves, rather than sharing one password across the office.

Question 8

Can I hold a seat for my customer for a while before they pay, or do I have to issue the ticket straight away?

Accepted Answer

Yes, with many airlines you can hold a seat and issue the ticket a little later, but it is not something every airline offers. When the booking is made, the airline gives a ticketing time limit, and until that moment passes the seat sits reserved in your customer's name at the fare that was quoted. If the ticket is not issued before the limit runs out, the airline cancels the hold on its own and the seat goes back on sale. The important thing to understand is that the time limit belongs to the airline, not to you and not to your portal. Some carriers give a comfortable window, some give only a very short one, and low cost airlines usually do not allow a hold at all and expect payment at the moment of booking. The fare also matters, because the cheapest promotional fares are often the first ones the airline excludes from holding. So you will see the option on some searches and not on others, and your portal can only pass on what the airline is willing to allow. Whether you see the option at all can also depend on the supplier connection sitting behind your flight search, as some suppliers issue every booking straight away and never offer a hold. That is worth asking your supplier about rather than assuming it will be there. Before you promise a customer that you will keep their seat, look for the ticketing time limit shown against that fare on the booking screen, and set yourself a reminder to either issue or cancel before it expires, because an expired hold usually cannot be brought back at the same fare.

Question 9

Can I book more than one room at the same hotel for a family or a group in one booking?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can normally book more than one room at the same hotel in a single booking, and you can say who is staying in each room, including children and their ages. When you search, you add the number of rooms you need and set the guests for each one. The supplier prices every room separately for the people in it, then shows you a total. Children's ages matter more than most agents expect, because a hotel may include a young child free in an existing bed, charge for an extra bed for an older one, or refuse to take that child in that room type at all. It is worth asking your customer for exact ages rather than guessing, because a wrong age is a common reason a family is asked to pay more at the desk. There are limits, and they come from the hotel and the supplier rather than from your website. Most suppliers cap how many rooms can go into one booking, and the cap is not the same everywhere, so a large party may have to be split across separate bookings or handled as a group enquiry with the hotel. Availability limits you too. If the hotel has only a couple of that room type left, your search will simply offer fewer rooms rather than let you overbook. Keep in mind that rooms booked together usually share one cancellation policy and one voucher, so removing a single room later may not be possible without cancelling the whole booking. If your customer might drop a room, book it on its own. Before you quote for a group, check with your supplier how many rooms they allow in one booking and whether child ages are required, so nothing surprises you at payment.

Question 10

If a customer books on my website late at night when my office is closed, will the ticket be issued automatically?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases it can be. When you sell through a connected supplier, the booking can be made and the ticket issued by the system itself the moment the payment clears, so someone buying in the middle of the night gets their confirmation without anyone in your office being awake. That is one of the main reasons to have a portal at all, because it keeps selling while you sleep. Whether it truly happens on its own depends on the supplier and on how you set things up. Many airline and hotel connections confirm instantly. Others come back as on request, which means a person at the supplier or at the hotel has to accept the booking, and that will not happen until their office opens. Some agencies also choose to hold every booking for a manual look before issuing, either to guard against card fraud or because a fare looked unusual. If you switch that check on, the booking waits for you rather than going out overnight. For most small teams the sensible middle ground is to let the instant suppliers issue on their own and keep manual review only for the connections you trust less, or for payments over an amount you set. The customer still receives an immediate email saying their booking has been received and is being confirmed, so nobody is left in the dark, and you finish the rest when you come in. Ask your supplier which of your connections confirm instantly and which are on request, then decide where you want automatic issue and where you want a human to look first. It is also worth checking the wording your customer sees while a booking is still pending, so a late night buyer knows exactly what will happen next.