Question 1

Will my white label portal show up on Google so travellers can find it?

Accepted Answer

Yes, it can be found on Google, but that does not happen on its own just because the portal is live. Your site needs to run on your own domain name, be open to search engines rather than blocked, and have pages that are worth showing to somebody searching. Once that is in place, the search engines will crawl your home page, your content pages and your policy pages in the normal way, the same as any other website. What usually does not get listed is the search result and booking pages themselves. Those are built fresh each time from live supplier data, so the prices and availability change by the hour and search engines tend to ignore them or drop them quickly. This is normal for every travel site, not a fault in your portal, and it is the reason travel businesses win traffic through destination pages, guides and offers rather than through the booking screens. Be realistic about how long it takes. A brand new domain competes against very large travel sites that have been publishing for years, so it is usually months, not weeks, before you see steady traffic, and it depends far more on the writing and the links you build than on the booking engine behind it. Paid ads, your social pages and your existing customer list will bring you business much sooner while the search side grows. A good next step is to confirm your portal is running on your own domain, then register it with Google Search Console so you can see exactly which of your pages have been picked up.

Question 2

Will my portal warn my customer about city taxes or resort fees they have to pay at the hotel itself?

Accepted Answer

Yes, when the supplier tells us about them, and most of the larger ones do. Some countries charge a tourist tax per person per night, and some resorts add a daily fee for things like the pool, the gym or the internet. These are collected by the hotel at check in rather than taken when the booking is made, so they sit outside the amount your customer pays you. Where the supplier sends that detail, the portal shows it on the room and again before payment, worded as a charge payable at the hotel. The reason we cannot promise it every time is that this information comes from the supplier feed, not from us. A well maintained property will list the tax clearly, the currency it is charged in and who is exempt. A smaller one may say nothing at all, or may describe it loosely in the notes rather than as a figure the portal can display on its own line. When nothing is sent, the portal has nothing to show, and your customer meets the charge at the desk. This is worth taking seriously because a surprise at check in is the sort of thing that gets blamed on the agency rather than the hotel. If you sell a lot in destinations that apply a tourist tax, it is sensible to add a short line of your own to your booking terms and your confirmation email saying that local taxes and fees may be payable directly to the property. Run a test search for a destination you know charges a tourist tax and see how clearly it appears in the room details, then decide whether you want your own wording added on top of it.

Question 3

Can my customers add travel insurance when they book a trip on my portal?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in many cases they can, but it is not something that is simply there from day one. Insurance is sold by an insurance company, so it has to be connected to your portal in the same way a flight or hotel supplier is connected. Once that is done, the cover appears as an extra step during booking, usually just before payment, and the customer chooses whether to take it or skip it. What the customer is offered depends entirely on the insurer you work with. Some give a single simple cover per traveller, others price it by age, trip length or destination, and some only cover residents of one country. The portal shows what the insurer sends back, so it cannot offer a cover the insurer does not sell for that trip. The policy document and any claim your customer later makes are handled by the insurer, not by your agency and not by the portal. Whether this option is included for you depends on your plan and on whether you already have an arrangement with an insurance company. If you do not have one, you would need to set that up first, and the earnings you make on each policy are agreed between you and the insurer. If selling insurance matters to your business, ask your account manager whether your plan supports it and have your insurer's contact details ready when you do, because the connection cannot be started without them.

Question 4

Can I give my customers a discount code to use on my portal?

Accepted Answer

Yes, on most plans you can set up a discount code and let your customers type it in before they pay. A code is normally made in your admin area, where you decide what it takes off, whether it is a set amount or a share of the booking value, and when it starts and stops working. You can usually limit it as well, so it only applies to hotels and not flights, or only to bookings above a certain value, or only for a single use per customer. When the customer enters the code at the payment step, the portal checks it, shows the reduced amount and records against the booking which code was used, so you can see later how a campaign performed. It is worth being clear about who pays for the discount. The code comes off your own margin, not off what the supplier charges you, so if you have already added a small markup and then offer a large code on top of it, you can end up selling below your cost. The portal will not stop you doing that, so it is on you to set the code within what your markup can carry. Some payment methods and some supplier rates also sit outside discounting, so a code may not apply to every product on your portal. Before you promote a code, make one with a short validity, run a test booking through with it, and check that the amount taken and the amount recorded on the booking are both what you expected.

Question 5

Does my portal tell my customer whether breakfast is included in the room rate?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the room results on your portal show what the rate includes, and breakfast is one of the things called out there. Each room a hotel offers comes back to your portal as its own choice, and the same room is very often sold twice, once with meals and once without, so your customer picks the version they want rather than finding out at the hotel. The wording your customer sees comes from the supplier, so it will not always read the same way from one hotel to the next. Some send back a clear line saying breakfast is included, some describe it as room only or as bed and breakfast, and a few describe a fuller board where lunch or dinner is covered as well. Your portal shows that line as it is given rather than rewriting it, because the hotel is the one honouring it at the front desk. Be aware that a meal included in the rate is not the same as a meal already paid for at the hotel. Where a supplier only settles part of the stay directly, the hotel may still ask your customer to sign for the meal at the restaurant even though nothing more is owed. This is unusual, but it does happen with certain properties, so it is worth reading the room description in full rather than the short label alone. When you are checking this, search a hotel you know well on your own portal and compare the room choices it returns against what that hotel actually sells, so you can see for yourself how the meal wording is coming through from the supplier you are on.

Question 6

How long does a refund take to reach my customer after I cancel their flight ticket?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a refund can be raised straight from your portal for most flight tickets, but how quickly the money reaches your customer is largely in the airline's hands rather than yours. When you cancel, the request goes back to the airline through the same connection that issued the ticket. The airline then decides what part of the fare is refundable, takes off whatever cancellation charge applies, and releases the balance back down the chain to your account. It helps to think of it as two separate steps. The first is the airline returning the money to the account the ticket was paid from, and that is the step you cannot speed up. The second is you passing it on to your customer, which is in your control. If the customer paid by card, their bank usually needs a few more working days after that before the amount actually shows on their statement. Be careful about promising a date. Some fares refund only the taxes and nothing else, and certain cheap tickets are not refundable at all, so the sum your customer gets back can be far smaller than they expect. Refunds also tend to move more slowly during busy travel periods or when an airline is dealing with widespread cancellations. When you cancel, tell your customer a realistic range rather than a firm day, and read the fare rules shown at the time of booking so you know what is actually refundable before you set expectations.

Question 7

If my customer loses the confirmation email, can they get their ticket or voucher sent again?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a lost confirmation is one of the easier problems to fix, because the portal keeps the booking and its documents after the email has gone out. You can open the booking in your admin area, find the ticket or the hotel voucher against it, and send it again to the same address or to a different one if your customer has given you a new email. Most portals also let your customer help themselves. If they signed in when they booked, the trip sits in their account and they can download the document from there. If they booked as a guest, there is usually a page where they enter the booking reference and the email address they used, and the portal shows the trip and lets them print it. Which of these two routes you have on your own site depends on how your portal has been set up, so it is worth trying it once yourself so you know what to tell people. There are a couple of honest limits. The portal can only resend what the supplier has already given it, so if a ticket was never issued or a voucher never came back from the hotel, resending will not produce one and the booking needs to be looked at properly instead. Emails can also land in a junk folder or be blocked by a company mail system, so a resend that appears to work may still not arrive, and in that case sending it to a personal address usually gets through. The next time this comes up, check the booking in your admin area first to confirm the document is really there, then resend it and ask your customer to look in their junk folder as well as their inbox.

Question 8

Does my portal ask for passport details when my customer books an international flight?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a portal can collect passport details, but whether it actually asks for them on a given booking depends on the airline and on the fare your customer has chosen. Some airlines want the passport number, the country of issue and the expiry date at the moment the ticket is issued, and in those cases the booking cannot be completed until the fields are filled in. Others are happy to take just the name and date of birth, and they collect the passport later at check in. When the details are asked for, they should be typed exactly as they appear on the passport, including the middle names if the airline asks for the full name. A detail that does not match the document can cause trouble at the airport, and correcting it after the ticket has been issued is not always simple or free, since that part is decided by the airline and not by your portal. Please keep in mind that a portal cannot tell your customer whether they need a visa for the trip. Entry rules belong to the country being visited and they change often, so the traveller remains responsible for holding the right documents, whatever the booking screen accepted. A sensible next step is to ask which of your suppliers require passport details at the time of booking, and to tell your staff to copy those details straight from the document rather than from memory.

Question 9

Will my portal show the last date a hotel can be cancelled without a charge?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in nearly every case the cancellation deadline is shown before your customer pays. Each rate that comes back from a supplier carries its own cancellation terms, and those terms are displayed on the room and again on the review page, so the customer can see whether the rate is refundable and, if it is, the date and often the local time after which a charge applies. The same terms are repeated on the confirmation and the voucher, so your customer has them in writing. The deadline is set by the hotel, not by you or by your portal, so it varies a great deal. Some rooms can be cancelled up to the day of arrival, others need several days or even weeks of notice, and non refundable rates cannot be cancelled at all without losing the money. Peak dates, long stays and group bookings often carry stricter terms than the same room on a quiet week, so the answer for one booking is not the answer for the next. One point worth knowing is that the deadline runs in the hotel's own local time zone, not your customer's. A booking that looks like it still has a day left can already be past its deadline if the hotel is several hours ahead. When a cancellation is close to the line, treat the hotel's clock as the one that counts. When you are checking a rate, read the cancellation line on the room before you quote it to your customer, because two rooms in the same hotel at a similar price can have very different terms.

Question 10

Can my customers book a hotel for the same night on my portal, or do they have to book in advance?

Accepted Answer

Yes, same night bookings are possible on your portal, but whether a particular hotel accepts one depends on the supplier the rate comes from and on how late in the day your customer is trying to book. When a search is made for tonight, your portal asks the suppliers what is still open for that date and shows only what comes back. Hotels that have closed their availability for the day, or that have set a cut off time for arrivals, simply will not appear, so the list your customer sees late in the evening will be shorter than the list for next week. If the booking goes through, the confirmation and the voucher are produced in the usual way and the hotel is told to expect the guest. The honest limits are worth explaining to your staff. Some suppliers stop accepting bookings for the current night at a fixed hour, and others pass the request to the hotel to accept, which is slower and does not suit a guest already on the way. A same night rate is very often non refundable, and if the guest arrives after the hotel's stated arrival time the room may not be held. None of that is something your portal can override, because the rules belong to the hotel and the supplier. If same night business matters to you, ask your suppliers what their cut off times are and which of their hotels confirm instantly, and tell your staff to phone the hotel directly for a very late arrival so the front desk is expecting the guest.