Question 1

Can my customer search for the cheapest dates to fly in a month instead of picking one exact date?

Accepted Answer

Yes, but only where the flight supplier behind your portal offers it, so it will not be available on every airline or every route you sell. A flexible date search works differently from a normal one. Instead of asking for a single day, your portal asks for a spread of days around the date your customer had in mind and shows the lowest fare found on each of them, usually as a small calendar the customer can click through. It suits holiday travellers who can move a day either way, and it will often turn up something better than a fixed date search would have shown them. There are limits worth knowing before you promise this to anyone. A search across many days takes noticeably longer to come back than a search for one day, because there is far more for the supplier to look up, so your customer will be waiting a little longer at that screen. The fares on the calendar are a guide taken at that moment and can move before the customer chooses a day, so the real price is only settled when the booking is confirmed. Some suppliers do not answer this kind of request at all, and budget airlines in particular often reply only for the exact day you asked about. Tell us the routes your customers ask about most often and we can check whether your current flight suppliers return flexible dates on them before you add the option to your search form.

Question 2

Can I sell travel insurance to my customers alongside their flight or hotel on my portal?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can offer travel insurance alongside a flight or a hotel on your portal, but it works as an add on from an insurance provider rather than as something the portal creates on its own. During checkout the customer is shown a cover option, they choose to take it or skip it, and if they take it the cost is added to what they are paying you for the trip. What the customer sees depends on the insurance supplier you are connected to. Some send back a single plan for the whole trip, others send several levels of cover with different limits, and a few can only quote once they know the traveller ages and the destination country. Whether the policy document arrives straight away or comes later by email is also set by that supplier, not by the portal. There are two things worth being clear about. Selling insurance is regulated in most countries, so you may need a licence or an arrangement with a broker before you are allowed to offer it to your customers, and that is your responsibility rather than something the software can grant you. The claim itself is always settled between your customer and the insurer, so your portal can show the policy and the reference, but it cannot approve or pay a claim. The next step is to check whether your plan includes an insurance connection and whether the provider you want covers the countries your customers travel to, then confirm with your own regulator or broker that you are permitted to sell cover before you switch the option on.

Question 3

Can I book a large group travelling together on my portal, or do I have to arrange that myself?

Accepted Answer

No, not as one single booking in most cases, because airlines and hotels treat a large group as a different kind of contract from an ordinary reservation. The flight APIs that feed your portal have a limit on how many passengers can go on one booking, and that limit is set by the supplier, not by us. Once your party is bigger than the limit, the fare you see in a normal search is no longer the fare the airline will hold for you. Airlines run a separate group desk that quotes by hand, usually with a deposit, a deadline for passenger names and its own rules about changes. The same applies to hotels once you want more rooms than the supplier allows in one go. What your portal can still do is useful. Your staff can split the party across several bookings in the same session, which works well when everyone is happy to travel on the same flight at the going fare. They can send the customer a quote, keep every booking under one customer record, and add notes so anyone in your office can see how the group fits together. If you obtain a group fare offline, you can record it in the portal as your own booking so the sale and the payment sit alongside everything else. Check the passenger limit your flight supplier allows on a single booking, and ask the airline group desk what they need from you before you promise the customer anything.

Question 4

If my customer cancels a flight booked on my portal, will they get their money back quickly?

Accepted Answer

No, a refund is almost never instant, and the honest answer is that it usually takes weeks rather than days. It is worth telling your customer this at the moment they cancel, because most people expect the money back the same week. When your staff cancel a ticket on the portal, the request goes to the airline through the API and you get a confirmation that the cancellation has been accepted. That part is quick. What follows is the airline working out how much of the fare is actually refundable once its own penalty and the taxes it is willing to return are taken into account. That figure comes back to you, and only then does the money begin to move. Airlines vary a great deal here, and some are far slower on certain routes and fare types than others. The money also does not travel straight from the airline to your customer. It goes back to whoever paid the airline, which is normally your supplier or your own account, and you then refund your customer by the method they originally used to pay you. If they paid by card, their own bank adds a few more days at the end. On a non refundable fare only the taxes come back, and on some fares not even those. The safest approach is to cancel on the portal first, note the refundable amount the airline actually returns, then give your customer that figure and a realistic window rather than a fixed date, and keep the case open on your side until the money has landed with them.

Question 5

Will my portal work properly on a mobile phone for customers who do not use a computer?

Accepted Answer

Yes, your portal is built to work on a mobile phone, and most agencies now find that more of their customers arrive that way than from a computer. The search screens, the results list, the passenger details form and the payment page all adjust themselves to the size of the screen, so a customer can look for a flight or a hotel, fill in their details and pay without having to pinch or scroll sideways. Your own staff can use the same portal on a phone or a tablet when they are away from the desk, and a booking made that way is the same booking that shows up in your reports back at the office. There are limits that are worth knowing about. Some steps during a booking are handed over to somebody else, such as the bank page where the card is entered, or an airline page for a special fare, and how neatly those behave on a small screen depends on that supplier rather than on us. Very old phones and very old browsers can also struggle with parts of the payment step. If you have chosen your own design with heavy photographs on the home page, that can feel slow on a weak mobile signal, and that part is in your hands. The best thing to do next is to open your own portal on your phone, run a real search all the way through to the payment page, and tell your account contact about any screen that felt cramped or slow so it can be looked at.

Question 6

Can my customer pay for their hotel at the hotel instead of paying me when they book?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in many cases they can, but it depends on the rate you are selling. Hotel content that comes through an API usually arrives in two kinds. Some rates are prepaid, which means the room is paid for at the time of booking and the money moves before the stay. Others are pay at hotel, where your customer gives card details to hold the room and settles the bill at the front desk when they check out. Your portal can show both kinds side by side, and each room can be labelled so the customer knows which one they are choosing before they confirm. Whether a particular property offers a pay at hotel rate is decided by the supplier and the hotel itself, not by your portal, so you will find some hotels and some cities where only prepaid rates come back in the search results. There is one thing worth thinking about before you switch pay at hotel rates on. Your margin on those bookings does not reach you at the moment of booking, because no money has moved yet. Depending on how the supplier works, you may be settled after the stay is completed, and if the guest does not turn up you may not be settled at all. Prepaid rates land sooner and are easier to reconcile, which is why many agencies lean on them. The next thing to check is which of your suppliers actually return pay at hotel rates, and how each one handles your margin on them, so you can decide whether to show both kinds to your customers or keep the search results to prepaid rooms only.

Question 7

Can my customer download their own ticket and hotel voucher from my portal, or do I have to send it to them?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases your customer can download their own ticket and hotel voucher from the portal without waiting for you to email it. Once the booking is confirmed and the payment has gone through, the documents appear on the booking page, ready to view, download or print. A customer who booked while logged in will find it in their own trip list, and a customer who booked as a guest can normally reach the same page using the booking reference and the email address they used. What they get depends on the supplier. A flight e-ticket can only be produced after the airline has issued the ticket, which for most fares happens within minutes of payment and for some happens later, so until then your customer sees a confirmation with a booking reference rather than a ticket number. A hotel voucher carries the property name and address, the guest names, the dates and the supplier reference the front desk asks for at check in. You have some control over how the documents look. They can carry your logo, your agency name and your contact details, and you can usually add your own booking conditions so the customer reads your terms. Whether a particular line can be hidden or reworded depends on the supplier, because parts of a voucher are passed through exactly as they were sent and must not be changed. Make one test booking yourself and download both documents, and check that your confirmation email carries the link back to the booking page, so you know exactly what your customer will see.

Question 8

Can my customer hold a flight and pay for it a day or two later on my portal?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes, and it depends entirely on the airline and the fare, so it is not something you can offer on every booking. Some airlines allow a booking to be held for a set period before the ticket has to be issued, and when that option comes back through the API your portal can create the booking, show the traveller the deadline and wait for payment. Many fares, especially the cheapest ones and most budget airline fares, must be paid and ticketed straight away, and for those no hold is possible. When a hold is allowed, the airline sets the deadline, not you and not the portal. If the payment does not arrive before that moment, the airline cancels the held booking automatically and the seat goes back on sale. The fare can also be gone by then, so a traveller who comes back late may have to be quoted again at whatever price is available at that time. Some agencies prefer to handle this themselves rather than rely on the airline. They take a deposit or a booking form from the traveller, then issue the ticket right away so the fare is locked, and collect the balance afterwards. That is a commercial decision for your business and it carries the risk that the customer does not pay, so it suits regular clients and corporate accounts better than walk in enquiries. Check with each of your airline and consolidator sources which of their fares allow a hold and how long it lasts, then decide whether you want your staff to offer it or to quote and ticket in one go.

Question 9

Can my customers book an airport transfer or hire a car on my portal, or is it only flights and hotels?

Accepted Answer

Yes, many travel portals sell more than flights and hotels, and airport transfers and car hire are the two most common additions. Whether they appear on your own portal depends on the plan you are on and on whether a supplier for that product has been connected to your account, so it is worth checking what is switched on for you before you promise it to a customer. When a transfer supplier is connected, your customer can search for a car from the airport to their hotel by giving the pickup point, the date and the number of passengers, then book it alongside the flight or the hotel. Car hire works in a similar way, using the pickup and drop off branch, the dates and the age of the driver. The vehicles offered, the meeting instructions and the cancellation rules all come from the supplier, so what your customer sees is what that supplier has available at that moment. There are limits worth knowing. Not every airport or small town has a transfer or car hire supplier, so some searches come back empty even when the flight and the hotel are there. Luggage limits and child seat requests are handled by the supplier, and a change after booking usually has to go through them rather than being edited on your portal. Check which products are enabled on your account, and run a test search on the routes your customers actually travel, so you know what your portal will really return before you advertise it.

Question 10

Can I give the smaller agents who work under me their own login on my portal?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can. A white label portal is normally set up so that you sit at the top as the main agency, and you can create separate logins underneath you for the smaller agents who sell through you. Each of them signs in with their own username and password, searches and books inside the same portal, and sees only their own bookings and their own customers, not yours and not each other's. The useful part is that you stay in control of the money. For each sub agent you can usually set the markup they are allowed to earn, or set your own markup so the price they see already includes what you make on the sale. You can also give them a credit limit or ask them to keep a topped up balance, so a booking only goes through when they have the funds for it. If you would rather keep a closer hold on things, you can ask for tickets to be released only after you approve them. Be honest with yourself about how far this needs to go, because the answer depends on your plan and on the suppliers behind your portal. Some plans limit how many sub agents you can have, or how many levels deep the structure goes, so an agent sitting under another agent under you may not be possible. A few supplier agreements also restrict who is allowed to see certain fares, so a rate that shows for you may not show for everyone below you. Before you commit, write down how many sub agents you expect in your first year, whether they should see net rates or only your selling price, and whether you need credit limits from the start, then ask for those points to be confirmed in writing.