Prices and statuses typed in from suppliers
The Travel pack has no live flight or booking-system feed. Where its availability, prices and statuses come from, and how to keep them right.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Travel businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
Where does the price on the screen come from? For a travel agency choosing a system, it is the first question worth asking, because the answer decides what you can trust without checking.
Some travel systems connect to airline reservation systems or wholesalers' booking engines and pull availability and fares in as you search. The Travel pack in Achekam's Industry CRM does not. It has no live flight or booking-system feed: availability, prices and statuses are entered by staff from the supplier, and the pack applies for no visas.
That is a clear boundary, and it is better understood at the start than discovered in the middle of a booking. This article explains what it means day to day and how to work with it.
What the pack is, and what it is not
The Travel pack is a place to run bookings, not a place to search for them. It keeps bookings with their travellers and itinerary legs, and traveller profiles with passport details and preferences kept with consent. Each booking moves from Enquiry to Quoted, Booked, Ticketed and Travelled, or ends as Cancelled or lost.
Like every industry pack, it sets its own words, records, pipelines, workflows, document requests, documents to sign, reminders, catalogue, ledger accounts and home-page counts. What it does not set is a connection to anyone else's inventory. Your consultants still search and book in the airline, wholesaler and hotel systems they use today, then record the result on the booking. IATA's Travel Agency Program page describes the accreditation an agency can hold to issue airline tickets itself, and the TIDS identification code.
For many agencies that is how work already happens. The difference is that the result now lands in one place, rather than in a consultant's inbox.
Who types what, and when it changes
Because everything on the booking was typed by a person, it is worth knowing which figures go stale fastest.
| What is recorded | Where it comes from | When to check it again |
|---|---|---|
| Availability | The supplier's system or reservations desk | Just before quoting, and again before booking |
| Price | The supplier's rate or quote | When the quote's validity runs out |
| Booking status | The supplier's confirmation | After ticketing, and before departure |
| Flight times | The airline or consolidator | Before departure, as schedules change |
A quote built on a price checked this morning is sound this morning. A week later it is a starting point. Put a validity period on every quote that reflects how quickly your suppliers' prices move, and re-check before accepting payment on an old one.
Visas stay with the traveller
The pack applies for no visas. It can ask a traveller for their passport and visa documents as part of the booking, but the application itself is made by the traveller, or by a visa service your agency arranges separately.
Tell clients this plainly and early. A traveller who assumes the agency "handles visas" because the system asked for their passport is a traveller who may arrive at the airport without one.
Checking what was typed
Typing creates errors: a transposed digit in a fare, the wrong date on a hotel night, a status set to confirmed when the supplier said provisional. None of them are exotic, and all are cheaper to catch before the client sees them.
Habits that catch most of them:
- Read the quote back against the supplier's own figures before it goes to the client.
- Have a second person look over high-value bookings, group trips and anything with many legs.
- Never set a leg to confirmed on a verbal promise. Wait for the supplier's written confirmation.
- Re-check statuses at fixed points, not only when something goes wrong: after ticketing, and in the days before departure.
Keeping the supplier's word on file
A status on a screen is only as good as the confirmation behind it. When a supplier confirms a leg, keep their confirmation, with their own reference, where anyone in the office can find it.
Achekam's Document Centre is a folder-based store where you upload files, preview, tag and search them, and a new version keeps the earlier ones. Every stored file gets a fingerprint, and every upload passes a malware check. A folder per booking, with each supplier's confirmation saved in it, means that when a hotel says it never received your booking, you can show the e-mail in which it did.
Save the supplier's reference with the confirmation and name the file by it, so a call to the supplier starts with their reference rather than a description of the client.
Saying so to the client
Clients tend to assume a quote holds until they make up their mind. Tell them, in plain words on the quote itself, that the price was checked with the supplier on a stated date and may change until the booking is confirmed and the deposit paid. It costs one sentence and saves an awkward call.
When a price has moved by the time the client says yes, show them the supplier's new figure rather than quietly absorbing the difference or arguing about it. If your consultant recorded where and when the original price came from, that conversation is about facts, not about whose memory is right.
Working with the boundary
No live feed also means no dependence on one. A small lodge that confirms by e-mail, a local guide who confirms by phone and a large wholesaler are all handled the same way: a consultant checks, records the result and keeps the proof.
Agree the habits above as office rules before you move bookings into the pack. Then see how they fit into the booking itself in bookings and traveller profiles, and how reconfirmation before travel works in pre-departure checks and supplier commissions.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
