Do I need my own contracts with airlines and hotels before I can start selling on my portal?

No, you do not need your own airline or hotel contracts before you can start selling. A white label travel portal comes connected to supplier systems that already hold that inventory, so the flights, hotels and other travel on your site are supplied through those connections rather than through agreements you sign yourself. Your customer sees your brand and books with you, and the booking is passed through to the supplier behind the scenes.

This is the reason most agencies start this way. Signing directly with airlines and hotel chains usually takes accreditation, deposits and a lot of time, and none of that is quick to arrange when you are new. Selling through the supplier connections lets you open with a full range of travel from the first day, and you still control the branding and the amount you add on top of the supplier fare.

There are limits worth knowing. Which suppliers you can use depends on your plan and on the supplier itself, and some of them will still ask you to open your own account with them and give us your credentials before their content can be switched on. A few markets and a few types of content also carry their own rules about who may sell them, so what is available to you may not be identical to what another agency sees.

If you do sign your own hotel or airline contracts later, those can usually be added alongside the supplier content rather than replacing it. The next thing to check is which suppliers your plan includes and whether any of them need an account in your own name, as that is what decides how quickly you can go live.