Building holiday packages agents can book

A package agents can book is a fixed programme with its own price: dated departures with seats, a per-person price by room occupancy and season, the hotels, tours and transfers it is made of listed day by day, and one cancellation ladder. Flexibility comes from a few options you choose to offer, such as one upgrade and some extras, not from re-pricing every component on every booking.

Package or cart: two ways to sell the same trip

An agent who wants a stay, a tour and an airport transfer for a client can already book all three together. iTravel's cart re-quotes each line live from its own rates and confirms them all or nothing as one order; each line becomes its own booking, with its own snapshot, voucher and terms. That is how a B2B booking engine should handle an itinerary the agent assembles.

A package is the other way round. It is one product, with its own pricing engine beside the hotel, tour and transfer engines, sold as one booking. The difference matters most in four places:

Neither is better in general; the decision table further down says which to reach for.

What goes into a package

Start from the programme, not the price.

• Length: days and nights.
• The itinerary, day by day: the place (picked, not typed), a title, your words, the meals, where the night is spent, a photo. Days can be written in your other languages too.
• What it is made of: each component placed on its days. A component is your own hotel (a room type and rate plan), tour option or transfer route, linked by reference so operations and vouchers know exactly what was sold, or a written inclusion such as "dinner with a local family".
• Included and not included, and the notes an agent must read before selling.
• Who operates it, for your own team. Agents see what the trip is made of, never who supplies it.

If those components are not loaded yet, load them in the shape your contracts have first; loading contracted travel inventory covers the traps. Then switch the Packages module on.

Before a package can be published, a checklist computed from the package itself must be clear: length set, every day of the itinerary titled, a season priced for departures still to come, and either a departure in a priced season or "any date on request" switched on.

Fixed and flexible: what the agent can change

Decide deliberately what is closed. In iTravel these are fixed by you: the programme, the components, the departures and the season prices.

These are the agent's choices at booking:

• Rooms by occupancy: up to nine rooms, each with one to three adults, up to three children (each with an age) and up to two infants.
• One upgrade: a hotel swap or better room, charged per person or per booking. It can name the component it replaces, and the package voucher then prints the upgrade in place of that component.
• Extras: per person, which means the whole paying party, or per booking with a quantity and an optional cap.
• A date of their own, only if you allow "any date". Such a booking is always on request: nothing is confirmed until you say yes.

Changes after booking are yours: a package's date, rooms and extras are changed by you as the operator. The agent can correct the booking's details, not re-price it.

One price, or a sum of the parts?

In a package the price is the one you set. A season holds a price per person for a single, a twin and a triple room, children by age band, and infants (free unless you price them), with your cost beside each figure. Seasons of one package do not overlap. The linked components are never priced from their own rates: the hotel's contract tells your team what the room costs, and the package price is your decision about the whole programme, including the guide who travels with it, the coach used across three days and the margin.

Promotions apply to the people, never to the upgrade or an extra. Agency price tiers apply to packages as to everything else: a percentage moves every line, while a flat tier amount lands on each person only.

A worked example

Say a five-day programme has a season priced like this (illustrative): twin 600 per person (cost 450), child 2 to 11 at 300 (cost 220), infants free. A sea-view upgrade is 80 per person (cost 60); a private airport lounge is 40 per booking (cost 30).

An agent books one room for two adults and a child of 8, with the upgrade and one lounge:

Your margin is 450. Note that the upgrade is charged on three people, not two, because per person means the whole paying party. An agency on a tier of plus 10% pays 1,958, every line moved by 10%. On a flat tier of plus 50 per person it pays 1,930 instead: 50 more for each of the three travellers, and nothing extra on the upgrade or the lounge.

What happens when one component sells out

A package booking takes seats from its departure. It does not take a room from the hotel's allotment in the system, or a place from the tour's daily capacity, even when the component names your own hotel and tour. The references are there for operations and vouchers; the package's price and seats are its own.

Two consequences follow:

1. The departure's seat count is your promise. Set it to the rooms and coach seats you have actually secured for the programme.
2. Keep those rooms out of your free-sale stock. If the same hotel also sells on its own and its allotment includes the package's rooms, the same room can be sold twice: once as a stay, once inside the package.

When a hotel in the programme does fill or fail, the tools are on the departure and the package:

• Close the departure (a stop-sale on that date only), or reduce its seats, never below what it has sold.
• Switch the package to on request, so every new booking waits for your yes.
• Offer the alternative as the upgrade: a swap to another hotel, priced as a supplement, which the voucher prints in place of the component it replaces.
• Keep taking requests once a departure is full, if you switch that on: nothing is charged until you accept.
• Cancel the departure if it cannot run, with a preview per booking before anything moves.

Release dates belong in the same thought. Give each departure a release that falls before the hotels' own release, as discussed in hotel allotment, release periods and stop-sales. Once it passes, the departure stops selling instantly. The departure mechanics in full are in selling fixed departures to agents.

In a cart, by contrast, each line is checked against its own product's stock when it is priced, and the order is confirmed all or nothing.

How cancellation works: one ladder against one per line

A package has one ladder, counted from the departure on the destination's clock and frozen on the booking when it is made. It is free until its first step; with no ladder, free up to the number of hours you set; with neither, non-refundable. Where you have written your own policy text, your words are what the agent reads. A cancellation gives the seats back to the departure.

A cart order keeps every line's own terms. The hotel rate plan has its rules, the tour has its ladder, and cancelling one line leaves the others standing, with the order's status following.

The trade-off is yours to weigh. One ladder is far easier for an agent to read and sell. But your suppliers will each keep their own penalties, and a package ladder that is kinder than the strictest of them leaves you carrying the difference. Write the package ladder against the strictest component, or accept that gap as a cost of the product. Cancellation policies agents can read has patterns for both.

When a package beats a multi-item cart

On the last row: agents can put a hotel, a tour and a transfer on one client quote under a single package price, in their own brand. That is the agent's presentation, not a package in your catalogue. A package can also sit in a cart beside other lines, and with airport transfer suggestions switched on, the cart offers your own airport transfers for a package that has none on its arrival or last day. The public side is covered in selling to agents and travellers from one inventory.

Before you publish your first package

• The programme first: length, every day titled and written, meals and overnights filled in.
• Components linked, not just described, wherever they are your own hotels, tours and routes, so operations and vouchers print what was sold.
• A cost beside every price, on each season, child band, upgrade and extra, or the booking's cost is left unknown.
• Seats you have secured, and those rooms kept out of the hotels' free-sale allotment.
• A release before your suppliers', per departure if one differs.
• One ladder you can honour, set against the strictest component.
• Hold hours and on request decided: how long an agent may hold, and whether you confirm each booking yourself.
• Upgrades and extras limited to what operations can actually deliver.
• The price tester run for a single, a twin with a child and a triple, on the same engine agents are charged by.
• The page read as an agent before it goes live: departures, seats left, what is included, and the terms.