Question 1

Can I make a booking for a large group travelling together on my portal?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can handle groups, but a large party is treated differently from an ordinary booking and you should expect part of it to be arranged by hand. For flights, most airline systems treat a party above a certain size as a group, and they will not sell that many seats in one ordinary transaction. Your portal will let your staff book up to whatever the supplier allows in a single go, and beyond that you would either split the passengers across more than one booking or ask the airline or your consolidator for a proper group fare. Splitting is quick, but it does not guarantee everyone is seated together, and the two bookings can come out at different prices because seats sell in batches that run out. Hotels are usually more forgiving. Many suppliers allow several rooms on one booking, and the portal can keep them under a single reference so your staff see the whole group as one job rather than a pile of separate files. Even so, some hotels set their own ceiling on rooms per booking, and a few want to confirm a large party by hand before they accept it. Whether you run into that limit depends on the supplier and on the rate your customer picked. If group work is a regular part of your business, it is worth telling us early so the portal is set up with it in mind. In the meantime, ask each of your suppliers what their limit is per booking, and check which of your flight sources can quote group fares, before you promise a client one price for the whole party.

Question 2

Will the flight price stay the same from search until my customer pays?

Accepted Answer

No, a flight price is not guaranteed to stay the same between the first search and the completed booking. Airlines can change fares or withdraw available seats at any time, especially when only a small amount of availability remains in a particular fare type. A flight booking API normally checks the fare again before the booking is confirmed. If the airline or supplier has changed the fare, the portal may show the new amount and ask the customer to accept it before continuing. In some cases, the selected fare may no longer be available, so the customer will need to choose another flight or search again. The exact response depends on the airline, the supplier and the booking process supported by the API. A successful payment should not be treated as proof that the original fare was secured unless the booking and ticket are also confirmed. Your process should clearly tell the customer when a fare has changed and avoid presenting a search result as guaranteed. This helps your staff handle the booking correctly and reduces confusion if the final amount is different. Before going live, check how your chosen flight API handles fare checks, changed fares and payment when availability disappears during booking.

Question 3

Can I change the look of my white label travel portal so it matches my own brand colours and logo?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can. A white label travel portal is built to carry your own brand rather than ours, so your logo, your colours, your fonts and your own wording sit across the site your customers see. Most of that is set from your admin area, which means you can change a colour or swap a logo yourself without waiting for anyone to do it for you. How far you can go beyond that depends on your plan and on the template you start from. Simple changes such as colours, logo, banner images, the home page text and the pages in your footer are normally open to you. Deeper changes to the layout of the search results or the booking steps are usually handled as design work, because the booking screens have to keep talking to the suppliers correctly, and a free hand there can quietly break the part of the site that actually completes the sale. There are a few things you cannot rebrand. Hotel photos, hotel descriptions, airline names and fare rules come from the supplier and have to be shown as they are supplied, and some suppliers ask that their content is not altered at all. The emails and vouchers your customer receives can carry your name and your logo, although parts of the wording are sometimes fixed by the airline or the hotel. A good place to start is your admin area, so look through the branding settings and see how much you can already change yourself, then write down anything else you want moved or restyled and pass that list to your account manager, who can tell you whether it is a setting, a design job, or something the supplier controls.

Question 4

Will a hotel booking API give me the hotel photos and descriptions to show on my website?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a hotel booking API normally gives you hotel content as well as rooms and rates, so your website can show a proper hotel page with pictures, a description, the address and the facilities rather than just a name and a price. The content usually reaches you in two ways. A little of it comes back with the search results, things like the hotel name, the star rating, one main image and a short room description, so the results page has something to show straight away. The fuller material, meaning the photo galleries, the facility lists, the check in and check out times and the longer descriptions, is normally taken from a separate content feed that is loaded in advance and kept on your side. Suppliers work this way because sending all of that with every single search would make searching very slow for your customers. How good the content is depends completely on the supplier, and it does vary. Some send plenty of large, clear photographs and descriptions in several languages, while others send only a few small images and a line or two of text. There are also rules about use. The images belong to the hotel or the supplier, not to you, so your agreement will usually say that you may show them on your own site while you are working with that supplier, that you should refresh the content regularly, and that you may not pass it on elsewhere. Before you commit to a supplier, ask to see the content for a handful of hotels you already know well in the places you sell most, and check whether the photos and descriptions are something you would be happy to put in front of your own customers.

Question 5

Can a flight booking API let my customers choose their seats before they book?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a flight booking API can let customers choose seats before they complete a booking, but this depends on the airline, the fare and the information supplied through the API. When seat selection is available, the customer may see a seat map showing which places can be requested and whether an extra charge applies. Some airlines do not provide a seat map during the booking process. Others allow a seat request but do not guarantee that the chosen seat will remain available until the ticket is issued. An airline may also change the seat later because of an aircraft change or an operational need. The final seat assignment is always controlled by the airline. Seat choices can also vary by fare. A customer may be able to choose a standard seat with one fare, while another fare may only allow selection after booking or during check in. Seats with extra space, seats near the front and other preferred options may have different conditions or may not be offered through every supplier. Before offering seat selection on your portal, check which airlines and suppliers support it, when the seat is confirmed, and how any extra charge is shown to the customer.

Question 6

Do I need my own contracts with airlines and hotels to sell on my white label travel portal?

Accepted Answer

No, you do not usually need your own contracts with airlines and hotels to start selling. Most white label travel portals arrive connected to suppliers who already hold those agreements, so you can search, book and issue from their inventory once your portal goes live. That is the main reason a small agency can open a booking website without first spending months negotiating with carriers and hotel groups. What you do need is an account of your own with the portal provider and, in most markets, whatever licence or registration your local rules ask of a travel seller. Depending on the plan, you also need a way to pay for the bookings, either by keeping a balance with the supplier or by passing the customer payment through at the time of booking. Those conditions come from the supplier and from the market you sell in, not from the website itself, so they can differ from one country to another. If you do already hold contracts of your own, whether a rate agreement with a hotel or your own airline arrangement, these can often be added alongside the standard suppliers so that your own rates appear in the same search results. Whether that is possible depends on the supplier being connectable and on the plan you choose, so it is much better to raise it before you sign than afterwards. Make a short list of the suppliers and private rates you want to sell, and ask which of them are already available on the portal and which would need a separate connection setting up.

Question 7

Can a flight booking API tell my agency when an airline changes a booked flight?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a flight booking API can help your agency find out when an airline changes the time, flight number or route of a booked journey. The information available depends on the airline, the flight supplier and the API connection, so not every change will appear in the same way or at the same speed. Some connections send an update when a schedule change is recorded, while others require the booking to be checked again before the new details appear. Your portal or agency system may then show the changed itinerary, mark the booking for attention or notify the staff member handling it. Customer notifications may also be possible, depending on the features included in your plan and how the booking process has been set up. The API may show the replacement flight and whether the airline needs a response, but it does not always mean that the change can be accepted automatically. Major changes, cancelled flights and unsuitable alternatives may need your staff to contact the supplier, review other options or request a refund. The final choices and conditions are controlled by the airline and supplier. Before relying on automatic updates, check which schedule change messages your chosen flight suppliers provide, how often bookings are refreshed, and what your staff must do when a changed booking is flagged.

Question 8

Will a hotel booking API show rooms that are actually available to book?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a hotel booking API can show rooms that the supplier currently reports as available. The search results can include room types, meal options, cancellation conditions and the amount the customer must pay. This lets your staff or customers compare available choices without contacting each hotel separately. Availability is not a permanent promise. Hotels may sell the same rooms through several channels, and another guest could take the last room while your customer is completing the booking. The supplier may also update its inventory at different times, so a room shown during the first search can become unavailable before confirmation. For this reason, the API normally checks the room and its conditions again when the customer selects it or moves towards payment. If anything has changed, the portal should show the latest information and ask the customer to accept it before continuing. Exactly when this check happens, and how quickly changes appear, depends on the hotel supplier and the API connection. Before selling, ask glideFares which suppliers provide the locations and hotel types you need, then check how availability is confirmed during the booking journey.

Question 9

Can I get my booking and customer data out of my travel agency software if I ever move to another provider?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can take your data with you. Travel agency software normally keeps your bookings, your customer records and your invoices inside your own account, and gives you a way to download them as a spreadsheet or a similar file. That is usually done from the reports or the admin area, either as an export you run whenever you want one, or as a file that is sent to you on a regular basis. How much comes out depends on your plan and on the way the system is built. Booking references, passenger names, travel dates and the money side of a booking are the parts that export cleanly. Anything that really lives with the supplier, such as the live status of a ticket or a voucher held in the supplier's own system, may not come across in the same file, because that record belongs to the supplier and not to the software. If you want a full copy of everything rather than a report, it is fair to ask for that in writing, as it is not always included as standard. There is also the question of what happens after you leave. Some providers keep your account open in a view only state for a period so you can go back and pull older records for your accounts, and others close it on the last day of your plan. Neither approach is unusual, but you want to know which one applies to you well before that date arrives. Before you commit to any system, ask to see a real export from a working account, and check that it contains the fields your staff and your accountant actually rely on.

Question 10

Will my white label travel portal show up on Google when people search for holidays?

Accepted Answer

Yes, your portal can appear on Google, but it will not happen the moment you go live, and it is not something the portal does by itself. A search engine has to find your site, read it, and then decide it is worth showing to someone. That usually takes a few weeks after launch, and a good deal longer for the popular search terms that large travel websites have held for years. Most of what helps is in your hands. Use your own web address rather than a shared one, give every page a clear title and a short description written in plain words, and put real text on the site about the destinations, the trips and the services you actually sell. The pages that a customer reaches by running a search on your portal are usually not the ones that bring new visitors in, because their content changes with every search. The pages that do that work are the ones you write and keep, such as your home page, your destination pages and anything you publish from your own knowledge of a place. How much of this you can edit yourself depends on your plan and on how your portal has been set up. Some setups let you add and edit pages and page titles freely, others give you a fixed set of pages and only let you change the wording inside them, so it is worth finding out which one you have before you plan any work around this. A sensible first step is to connect your portal to a free Google Search Console account once you are live, so you can see which of your pages have been found and which searches are already sending people to you, then add or improve pages from there.