Travel agent registration on a B2B portal should be a vetting step, not a sign-up button. Decide whether agencies apply or are invited, what you require before you trade (licence, registration documents, references), who approves, and whether each new agency starts prepaid or on credit. In iTravel the registration page is off until you switch it on, and nobody books until you approve.
Self-registration or invitation?
Both have a place, and they can run side by side.
| Route | When it fits | The trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Invitation | Agencies you already trade with by email or phone | You do the typing, but you already know who they are |
| Self-registration | New agencies: a trade fair, a new market, word of mouth | Strangers can apply, so the vetting has to be real |
| Both | A known network plus steady new applications | Two doors, one standard: the same terms decide either way |
In iTravel, an invitation goes from Manage, Team, straight into the agency it belongs to, as a signed link in your brand that is valid for seven days. Self-registration is an optional public page on your portal, "Register as an agency", in the visitor's language. It exists only while you have switched it on; off, the address simply does not exist.
Who you invite first, and how to get them booking, is the subject of onboarding sub-agents in the first thirty days. This page is about the gate before that.
What to ask for, and why it is your policy
What you require from an agency before you extend it your rates, and possibly your credit, is your own due diligence. What a valid licence looks like differs by country and changes over time, so no software should decide it for you. What it should do is let you ask for exactly what you need, and nothing you do not.
iTravel always asks for the agency's name, a contact name, an email address and the country, because an application nobody can answer or place is not an application. Everything else is your choice:
- Facts you may require: phone, address, website, tax ID, trade licence number, IATA code, company registration number.
- Documents you may require: trade licence, tax certificate, IATA or TIDS card, company registration, insurance, or another document.
- References have no field of their own. Ask for them in the introduction text on the page; they arrive in the applicant's message, or as an "other" document.
Uploaded documents are kept as private files, never at a public address, and their type is read from the file itself rather than from what the browser claims. Approved, they move onto the agency's record with its trade identity.
The page tells a stranger nothing. Every submission gets the same "thank you, we will be in touch", whether the address already has a sign-in, has applied before, or is a bot that filled in a hidden field. Your desk, not the applicant, sees "applied before" and "already has a sign-in".
Approving, querying or declining
Each application arrives in a queue under Manage, Agencies, and your desk is emailed at the address you choose. Three answers are possible, and each is taken once: a second click finds the application already decided.
- Approve. You choose the agency's currency and, if you may set prices, its price tier and whether it buys net or on commission. The agency is created with its facts and documents, the applicant becomes its contact, and they are invited as its first admin. If your plan has no free sub-agent seat, the approval stops before anything is created; if an agency of that name already exists, it is refused, so a branch of an agency you already trade with does not become a second account by accident.
- Ask for more. You write the question. The applicant receives it with a link of their own, valid for 14 days and usable once. Documents they already sent still count, so only what is missing has to be uploaded.
- Decline, with a reason the applicant reads.
Every email to the applicant is in the language they applied in, under your brand.
Prepaid or credit at the start
An approved agency's account opens prepaid unless someone with the right to set money terms gives it a credit limit and days to pay at the moment of approval. That default is deliberate: the person who vets a licence is not always the person who should lend money.
Starting everyone prepaid costs you some friction and nothing else. Starting a new agency on credit is a loan to a business you met last week. A middle course is prepaid for a set period, then a modest limit for agencies that have booked and paid cleanly, reviewed agency by agency. Whatever you choose, each change to a limit, terms or a hold is recorded with who made it. The mechanics of the account itself are in agent credit and prepaid wallets, and choosing the agency's currency at approval is covered in which currency an agent wallet should be in.
Two other levers suit new agencies. Put them on a tier you keep for newcomers (see net rates, markup and agent tiers), and hide from that tier any contract you keep for proven partners. And if you allow holds, you can cap how many one agency keeps open at once.
Roles inside the agency
An agency is a team, and the roles inside it are partly yours and partly the agency's.
| Who | Decides |
|---|---|
| You | Who the agency's admins are; whether its admins may invite and suspend their own colleagues (off until you allow it, because you pay for the seats); which kinds of product each person may book; whether its traveller vouchers carry the agency's own brand |
| The agency's admin | Whether colleagues see each other's bookings or only their own; the agency's own markup for its clients, which is private to the agency and never changes what you charge; its API keys, once you switch the API on for it |
| Each agent | Their own bookings and clients |
An agency's admins always see all of the agency's bookings. The agency cannot remove its own last admin; you can. Large partners that want to book from their own system are covered in the B2B travel API for agencies.
Suspending a person or an agency
Sooner or later you will need to stop someone booking, and the right tool depends on why.
- One person (a sub-agent who left, a shared password): suspend them from your team page, or let the agency's admin do it if you allowed that. A suspended person cannot sign in, and an API key acting as them stops working.
- The whole agency, for money (an overdue balance, a dispute): put its account on hold. New bookings are refused at the moment of booking, while fees on bookings already made still post, because they are true either way. Close the account when the relationship ends.
- A person's data (an applicant you declined, a former agent who asks): erase them. The person is redacted, the papers of a declined application are removed, and the bookings stay with the agency, now booked by "erased person".
Suspension never deletes bookings or money records. Your bookings desk still shows everything that agency bought.
A worked example: a fortnight after a trade fair
The figures are illustrative. Twelve agencies apply in the fortnight after a trade fair. Your policy, set on the registration page: trade licence number and tax ID required; trade licence and company registration documents required; the introduction asks for two trade references.
| Applications | What you found | Your answer | Starting terms |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 | Complete, references answered | Approve | Prepaid, newcomer tier, in the currency each one asked for |
| 2 | Licence expired or unreadable | Ask for more: "Please upload your current licence" | None yet; their link lasts 14 days |
| 1 | A branch of an agency you already trade with, applying under the same name | Approval refused as a duplicate name | Invite the person into the existing agency instead |
| 1 | Neither reference replied | Decline: "We could not verify your references" | None |
| 1 | An agency you have traded with by email for years | Approve, by your accounts lead | A credit limit of 3,000 and 15 days to pay |
Ninety days on, you review the seven prepaid agencies. Four have booked and topped up without trouble; you give them a modest limit. Two booked once. One never signed in, which is the cue for a phone call rather than a policy.
Checklist before you switch on registration
- Write your policy first: which facts and documents you require, and why.
- Put the reference request in the page's introduction text.
- Choose who is told of each application, and who answers within what time.
- Decide who may approve and, separately, who may set credit.
- Set the default starting terms: prepaid, a newcomer tier, the currencies you sell in.
- Decide whether agency admins may manage their own colleagues.
- Agree the suspension rule: person, account on hold, or closed.
- Test the page yourself from a private browser window before you announce it.
