How to launch an online travel agency

The steps, in order

1. 01

   Pick a niche

   The big OTAs win on breadth. A new OTA wins on a niche it knows well: a destination, a type of traveler or a type of trip. The niche decides your suppliers, your content and your marketing.

2. 02

   Choose a business model

   Merchant model, where you sell at your own price and pay the supplier the net rate, or agency model, where the supplier pays you a commission. Many OTAs use both. The model decides how payments, refunds and your cash flow work.

3. 03

   Sign supplier contracts

   Flights through a GDS or a flight content provider, hotels through bedbanks or direct contracts, plus tours, transfers and activities. Each supplier has its own approval, test account and terms, and some work only with registered travel businesses.

4. 04

   Check licensing and registration

   Many markets regulate selling travel. Find out what applies to you before you take the first payment. The section below lists the questions to bring to a lawyer.

5. 05

   Set up payments

   A payment provider account in your name, a hosted checkout so card data never touches your servers, and clear rules for deposits, refunds and currencies.

6. 06

   Launch the booking platform

   Search, a price check with the supplier before payment, booking, confirmation emails and a back-office for your team. Start with one market and a few suppliers, then add more.

7. 07

   Market and measure

   Content written for your niche, search and paid traffic, and tracking from the first search to the paid booking, so you know which channel pays for itself.

Licensing and registration, in general terms

This is not legal advice. Rules differ by country and, in the US, by state, and they depend on what you sell and how you take payment. Take these questions to a lawyer in your market before launch.

• Do you need a travel agency license or a seller of travel registration where your company is registered, and where your travelers live?
• Do you sell packages? Selling a flight and a hotel together can bring extra obligations, such as package travel rules and protection of travelers' money.
• Do you take the traveler's money before you pay the supplier? Some markets require a trust account, a bond or insurance for it.
• Do your suppliers or airlines ask for an accreditation before they give you content or ticketing?
• What must your terms, privacy notice and booking confirmations say?

What the booking platform costs

Most of an OTA booking engine already runs in our travel core, so you pay to connect your suppliers and fit your rules and brand, not to build it from zero.

Prices exclude applicable taxes. Every phase gets a fixed price before work starts.

Booking engine development for travel startups and OTAs

How much does a travel booking engine cost?

What to put in the first version

• One niche, one market and one currency.
• The two or three suppliers that cover most of what your travelers book.
• A price check before payment, so a changed price never reaches the traveler's card.
• A back-office where your team sees every booking, payment and supplier error.
• Everything else, such as more suppliers, languages, an agent channel or an AI assistant, in later phases once the first version sells.

Try an OTA booking flow live in the AI trip planner