Can I hold a flight booking for my customer without paying for it straight away?

Sometimes yes, but it depends entirely on the airline and the supplier behind the flight, so it is not something you can count on for every search result. Where a hold is allowed, our flight API passes it through to your portal, and you will see a time limit against the booking showing when the seats must be paid for and ticketed. If that deadline passes without payment, the airline usually releases the seats and the price may no longer be there when you come back to it.

As a rough guide, bookings made through full service carriers on a traditional reservation system are the ones most likely to allow a short hold before ticketing. Low cost carriers and many online fares work differently, because the seat is only really yours once payment goes through, so there is nothing to hold. Promotional and discounted fares are often excluded from holding even on airlines that normally permit it. Because the rule sits with the airline, we cannot promise it for a particular route or fare, and the same airline may behave differently on different fares.

On your portal, held bookings sit in your booking list in an unpaid state so your staff can see what is waiting and chase the customer before the deadline. You can ticket them later from the same screen once the money is in, and the system will tell you if the fare has changed or the seats have gone in the meantime.

The next thing to check is which of your connected suppliers actually return a ticketing deadline, because that will tell you how far you can really work on a hold and pay later basis with your customers.