Question 1

Can I tell whether a hotel room is confirmed straight away or only on request before I take my customer's money?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can see this before your customer pays. A hotel booking API normally sends back a status on each room option that says whether the booking is confirmed the moment you make it, or whether the request has to go to the hotel and wait for a reply. That status can be shown on your portal as a plain line next to the room, so your staff and your customer know what they are buying rather than finding out afterwards. The wording is not the same for every supplier. Some call it instant confirmation, some call it on request, and some send back a short code that has to be read and turned into ordinary language on your side. Whether the flag comes through at all, and how reliable it is, depends on the supplier and on what their API actually includes, so it is worth checking this supplier by supplier instead of assuming they all behave the same way. When a room is on request, the booking sits in a waiting state until the hotel answers, which can take a few hours and sometimes longer. You will need to decide what happens to the money in the meantime, whether you hold the payment and only charge once the hotel says yes, or take it and refund if the room is turned down. What you are able to do there depends on your payment gateway and on your plan, so it is not something to promise a customer before you have checked it. Ask each of your hotel suppliers which booking statuses their API returns and how long on request rooms usually take to be answered, then decide how you want those rooms shown and paid for on your portal.

Question 2

Can I keep track of how much money my sub agents owe me and stop them booking when they run out of credit?

Accepted Answer

Yes, this is one of the main things travel agency software is meant to do. Each sub agent gets their own account inside the system, a bit like a wallet. When they send you money you add it as a deposit, and every booking they make takes the fare plus your markup out of that balance. Cancellations and refunds go back in once the money has actually come back to you, so the figure on screen stays close to the one you would work out by hand. You can normally set a credit limit for each agent as well, so an agent you trust can keep booking a little past zero while another cannot. When an agent tries to pay for a booking and there is not enough left, the system stops them at the payment step and asks them to top up. Agents who pay by card through your own payment gateway are usually treated separately, because that money reaches you directly and does not touch their balance. It is worth being clear that this only tracks what your agents owe you. What you owe your own suppliers is a separate matter, and that side depends on the deal you have with each supplier and on the plan you are on. If a supplier needs funds sitting in your account before a ticket can be issued, a healthy agent balance will not help you there, so the two need watching together. Before you open your portal to sub agents, decide the credit limit and the top up method you want for each one, then run a test booking and watch the balance move the way you expect.

Question 3

Can I choose which airlines and hotels appear on my portal, or do I have to show everything my supplier sends me?

Accepted Answer

Yes, on most portals you can decide what your customers see, rather than being stuck with every result a supplier returns. Agents usually want this for good reasons, such as leaving out an airline they have had trouble with, hiding a class of property they do not want their name attached to, or keeping the results tidy so a customer is not scrolling through hundreds of near identical options. The filtering is normally set as rules you or your account manager save once, and it then applies quietly to every search. Depending on the setup, rules can be based on the airline, the supplier the result came from, the star rating, the type of property, or the region. Some portals also let you do the opposite and promote a preferred airline or a hotel you have your own rate with, so it sits at the top of the page. Be careful not to cut too much away. Every rule you add makes the results thinner, and if you block several airlines on a route that only has a few carriers, your customer may see nothing at all and assume your site is broken. It also depends on the supplier, because some allow content to be excluded properly at the search stage while others only let you hide it once it has already come back, which is not quite the same thing. Write down the handful of exclusions you genuinely need before you go live, then run a few real searches on your busiest routes to be sure you are still showing enough for a customer to choose from.

Question 4

If I spell my customer's name wrong on a flight ticket, can I fix it?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes, but it depends on the airline and on how big the mistake is. A small typo, such as a letter out of place in a first name, is often treated as a correction and many airlines allow it soon after the ticket is issued. Putting a completely different person on the ticket is treated as a name change instead, and most airlines will not allow that at all, because the ticket is not transferable. What you can do from your own portal also varies by supplier. With some suppliers the correction can be sent straight through the flight booking API and you get an answer back quickly. With others the request is accepted but then has to be worked on by the airline or the consolidator behind it, so you may be waiting hours rather than minutes. Low cost airlines usually keep their own rules here and often charge a fee for any change to a name, even a simple spelling one. Time matters more than anything else. The sooner you spot the mistake, the better your chances, and once check in has opened or the first leg has been flown, your options narrow very quickly. If the correction cannot be made at all, the usual route is to cancel and book again, and then the fare rules decide how much of your customer's money comes back. The safest thing is to stop it happening. Ask your staff to copy names exactly as they appear in the passport, including any middle name the airline asks for, and to read the name back on screen before taking payment. If a mistake has already gone through, raise it with your supplier straight away and warn your customer that the airline may charge for the fix.

Question 5

Can I sell hotel rooms where my customer pays the hotel directly when they check in?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can, but it depends on which rates your supplier gives you. Hotel booking APIs usually carry two kinds of rates. Prepaid rates are paid up front, so the money is collected on your portal at the time of booking and the supplier settles with the hotel later. Pay at hotel rates, sometimes called pay on arrival, let your customer confirm the room now and hand the money over at the front desk when they check in. Both kinds normally come back in the same search, and the API tells you which one you are looking at, so your website can show the difference clearly before your customer commits. A pay at hotel room still asks for a card at the time of booking in many cases, because the hotel wants a guarantee against a no show, but nothing is charged unless the guest fails to turn up or cancels late. The part worth thinking about is your own earning. On a prepaid room you take the payment yourself, so your markup sits with you straight away. On a pay at hotel room the money goes to the hotel, so your commission reaches you afterwards through the supplier, and the timing depends on the agreement you have with them. Some suppliers do not offer pay at hotel rates at all, and some hotels allow it only on certain room types or in certain countries. Before you switch these rates on, ask your supplier which of their hotels support pay at hotel and how they pass your commission back to you, and check that your booking page makes it plain to the guest what is still owed on arrival.

Question 6

If I ever decide to stop using my white label travel portal, can I take my customer list and booking history with me?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the customer details and booking history you build up on your portal belong to your business, and you should be able to take them with you if you ever move on. Your portal is your shop front, so the enquiries, the passenger records and the past bookings that sit behind it are your own trading records. In practice this usually means an export in a plain spreadsheet format covering your customers, your bookings and your invoices, which you can open in any ordinary office program or load into another system later. Some of the finer detail is harder to carry across, for example supplier reference numbers or documents that were issued by the airline or the hotel, because those live in the supplier system rather than in your portal. Anything held in your own payment gateway or your own email account stays with you either way. How much notice you need to give, and whether the export is included in your plan or arranged separately, does depend on the plan you are on and on the terms you agreed at the start, so it is worth reading that part rather than assuming. It is also fair to ask what happens to the records after you leave and how long they are kept. The simplest thing to do next is to ask for a sample export while you are still trading normally, so you can see exactly what the file contains and check that it holds everything you, your team and your accountant would need.

Question 7

Do I need my own IATA number to start selling flights on my portal?

Accepted Answer

No, you do not always need your own IATA number to start selling flights on your portal, but it does change what you can sell and how. Many travel businesses start out by selling through a consolidator or a supplier who already holds the airline agreements, and the tickets are issued under their accreditation while the customer stays yours. In that setup what you need is an account with that supplier, not an airline contract of your own. If you do hold your own IATA number and your own airline deals, your portal can be connected to those instead, so the fares and the commission you have negotiated are the ones your customers see. That usually gives you a better margin and more control over ticketing, but it also means you carry the reporting and the payment obligations that come with holding accreditation yourself. What is actually possible in each case depends on the supplier and on the plan you are on. Some suppliers will only open an account for agencies with certain paperwork in place, some ask for a deposit before they will let you issue tickets, and low cost airlines often work on a different basis to the full service carriers. None of that is decided by the software, it is decided by whoever the ticket is issued under. The sensible next step is to ask the supplier you are hoping to work with to tell you in writing what they need from you, and to check whether your existing agency registration is enough, before you fix a launch date for your portal.

Question 8

Can I sell a trip that goes to more than one city on the same flight booking?

Accepted Answer

Yes, most flight booking APIs let you sell a journey that covers more than one city on a single booking, and this is usually called a multi city search. Instead of one outbound flight and one return, you set out each leg with its own from, to and date, and the API prices the whole journey together. Your customer normally ends up with one itinerary and one ticket, which is easier for them at check in and easier for you to manage afterwards. How well it works depends on the supplier behind the search. Full service airlines and the larger content sources handle multi city journeys comfortably, and they will often price the whole trip more cheaply than the same legs bought separately. Low cost airlines usually do not, because they sell each flight on its own, so a journey that mixes them may come back as separate bookings with separate references and separate rules. Some sources also limit how many legs you can put into one search. There are a couple of things worth knowing before you promise a customer anything. If all the legs sit on one ticket, a change or a cancellation normally applies to the whole journey and not just the leg your customer wants to move, and the strictest fare rule in the itinerary tends to apply to the lot. If the legs come back as separate bookings, a delay on the first flight is your customer's problem rather than the airline's, so leave a sensible gap between arriving and departing. Try a few real multi city routes in your test environment and see what each of your suppliers actually returns, then decide whether to offer it openly on your website or keep it for enquiries you handle yourself.

Question 9

Can I sell travel insurance or visa help on my portal as well as flights and hotels?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can, though how it works depends on what you want to add and who supplies it. Travel insurance is usually offered through a partner who gives you a way to quote and issue a policy, and your portal can show it as an option on the checkout page so the customer ticks it before they pay. Visa help is different, because a visa is paperwork rather than something a supplier can confirm in seconds, so it is normally sold as a service you fulfil yourself after the booking is made. For anything you handle yourself, the usual approach is to set it up as your own add on, with your own name for it, your own price and your own short description. The customer picks it while booking, it appears on the same invoice as the flight or the hotel, and you get a job to follow up on. That keeps the whole trip in one record instead of you chasing it in a separate notebook or spreadsheet. There are honest limits worth knowing. Selling insurance is regulated in many countries, so you may need a licence of your own or you may have to sell through a licensed partner, and that is a rule from your regulator, not something the software can decide for you. If you want a live insurance price that changes with the trip and the traveller age rather than a flat fee you set, that needs an insurer who offers an API, and not every insurer in every market has one. The sensible next step is to decide whether you want to fulfil these yourself or through a partner, then check what add on products your plan allows and whether the insurer you have in mind can be connected.

Question 10

Will I get a confirmation number from the hotel itself when I book through a hotel booking API?

Accepted Answer

Yes in most cases, but it does not always arrive at the moment you make the booking. When a hotel booking API confirms a room it normally sends back a supplier reference straight away, and alongside it the hotel's own confirmation number when the property has given one. The supplier reference is the one you can count on, because it is created by the system you booked through. The hotel confirmation number comes from the property itself, so whether you get it, and how quickly, depends on the supplier and on the hotel. Some properties pass it back within a minute, some take a few hours, and some never send one through the API at all. That does not mean the room is not held. It usually means the property confirms with the supplier in its own time rather than instantly. For your customer this matters less than it sounds. Ask them to carry the voucher, because the voucher shows the reference the front desk will actually search for, and if a hotel number does arrive later it will normally appear on the booking in your system so you can send a fresh voucher. If a customer is nervous about it, most suppliers will check with the property directly if you ask them. The thing to do next is make one test booking with your supplier and look at what comes back, so you know which references you receive, where they appear on the voucher, and which of your suppliers hotels tend to return a property number.