How to start an online travel agency. Model, licences, suppliers, technology and budget.

Step 1: Choose your business model

Decide who your customer is before anything else. The model determines which licence you need, whether IATA accreditation matters early on, and what kind of software you buy.

Many agencies end up combining models, such as a consolidator that also runs a consumer site. Starting with one keeps the first licence, supplier and software decisions simple. If you are weighing consumer against agency sales, read B2B vs B2C travel portals.

Step 2: Register the company and get licensed

Almost every market asks for two things: a registered company and a travel-specific licence or registration. The notes below are general guidance checked against official sources in November 2026. Rules change, so confirm the current requirements, fees and documents with the authority before you apply.

United Arab Emirates

Travel agencies are licensed at emirate level, so the authority depends on where you set up. In Dubai, the Department of Economy and Tourism (DET) is the regulator; its legislation library includes Regulation No. 6 of 2006 on the licensing of tourist establishments and travel agencies, amended by Regulation No. 1 of 2009. In Ras Al Khaimah, the Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority (RAKTDA) licenses travel and tourism offices through its online Tourism Licensing & Permit Services portal.

Free zones and the other emirates run their own procedures. Ask the authority for its current document list, fees and any financial guarantee before you sign a lease or hire staff.

United Kingdom

The travel-specific rules depend on what you sell:

• Flight-inclusive packages and flight-only sales: the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says a seller that is not an airline and not an exempt person must hold its own ATOL. Exempt persons include an agent for an ATOL holder and a member of an accredited body. The rules also cover overseas businesses that advertise and sell to UK consumers.
• Packages: under the Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018, the organiser is responsible for every service in the package, must give set pre-contract information and must hold insolvency protection: ATOL for flight packages, and bonding, insurance or a trust account for others.
• Coming change: government guidance published in October 2026 says amendments take effect on 6 April 2027, reclassifying one type of linked travel arrangement as a package and removing the other.

The CAA publishes its fees. As of November 2026 it lists a Standard ATOL application fee of £2,606 plus 16.35p per passenger, with a bond of 15% of licensable revenue (minimum £50,000), and a Small Business ATOL application fee of £1,538 plus a £1,250 APC payment, with a minimum £50,000 bond. Many new agencies sell as an agent for an ATOL holder, or through an accredited body, before applying for their own licence.

Bangladesh

Travel agencies must register with the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism under the Bangladesh Travel Agency (Registration and Control) Act 2013. The ministry lists the 2013 Act, a 2021 amendment, a 2026 amendment ordinance and rules from 2014 and 2022. Applications go through the ministry's online travel agency registration portal.

• Published fees (as of November 2026): a new registration costs BDT 5,000 application fee, BDT 50,000 registration fee and BDT 7,500 VAT, and is valid for three years. Renewal is BDT 5,000, BDT 25,000 and BDT 3,750 VAT, and must be applied for at least 60 days before expiry.
• Processing time: the portal states 50 days in the Dhaka Metropolitan Area and 60 days elsewhere.
• 2026 ordinance: the amendment ordinance issued on 1 January 2026 sets separate bank guarantees for online and offline agencies (reported as BDT 10 million and BDT 1 million), requires annual financial statements and activity reports, and bans false bookings and ticket trading between agencies.

Industry associations have contested parts of the 2026 ordinance, and the ministry has said it will consider practical issues during implementation, so check the latest position before you apply.

Remember that a government licence and IATA accreditation are different things: the first lets you trade, the second lets you issue airline tickets in your own name.

Step 3: Decide how you will get airline and hotel content

To sell flights you need access to fares and someone with the right to issue tickets. There are two routes, and most new agencies start with the second.

A common path is to start as a sub-agent, build sales history and train staff, then apply. Our guide on how to get IATA accreditation covers the models, country checklists and published fees in detail.

Flights from the GDS are only part of the picture. Some airlines sell richer offers through NDC, many low-cost carriers sell mainly through their own channels (see GDS vs LCC airlines), and hotel rooms usually come from bedbanks or direct contracts. List the airlines and hotels your customers actually buy, then check which channel carries each one.

Step 4: Choose your booking technology

The booking platform turns your model into something customers can use. There are four ways to get one:

• Hosted SaaS: a subscription platform run by a vendor; quickest to launch and no servers to manage.
• Licensed source code: you own and host the code; suits companies with a development team and data-residency needs.
• Travel API: inventory delivered to a front end you build yourself.
• In-house build: every supplier integration and its maintenance is yours.

For a structured comparison read how to choose travel booking software, and for what each route costs see travel portal development cost.

Whatever the route, check the platform covers what your model needs:

• Consumer OTA: fast search across your content sources, a payment gateway, markup rules, customer accounts and a mobile-friendly site.
• B2B consolidator: agent onboarding, deposits and credit limits, markups per agent and a ledger for each sub-agent; see B2B travel portal software.
• Flight-heavy agencies: GDS, NDC and LCC content in one search, ticketing, and voids, refunds and reissues inside the system; see flight booking software.
• Every model: a mid and back office for invoicing, reconciliation and reporting.

For a category-by-category view of the tools agencies run alongside the booking engine, see what software travel agents use.

Step 5: Set up payments and PCI DSS

Payments are where a new agency carries the most risk, so set them up before launch rather than after the first booking.

• Payment gateway and merchant account: choose a provider that supports your currencies, the local payment methods your customers use and the refund flows travel needs.
• Card security: PCI DSS is the card industry's security standard for businesses that handle card data. The current version is 4.0.1, published by the PCI Security Standards Council in June 2024. Using your gateway's hosted payment page or tokenisation usually reduces how much of your own system falls in scope.
• IATA agents: IATA requires accredited agents to be PCI DSS compliant and to report their status through the IATA Customer Portal.
• BSP payment options: IATA EasyPay is a prefunded wallet for issuing BSP tickets; IATA says these sales do not count against an agent's cash issuance capacity.
• Disputes: plan for chargebacks with clear fare rules, cancellation terms and booking evidence.
• Paying suppliers: consolidators and bedbanks often work on deposits; some agencies pay hotels with virtual cards.

How much does it cost to start a travel agency?

There is no single figure. Cost depends on your model, country and whether you accredit, and we do not quote market averages that cannot be verified. Price each of these categories instead, using official fees where they are published:

For the technology line, ReservationHub publishes its prices. The Subscription Cloud Edition costs USD 99 a month plus USD 500 activation (Basic), USD 200 plus USD 800 (Standard) or USD 350 plus USD 1,200 (Premium). The Source Code Edition is priced per project, and the TripGic Travel API starts at USD 1,499 one-time. A first-year worked example is in travel portal development cost.

Marketing basics and a launch checklist

Marketing basics

• Pick a niche you can describe in one sentence: a route, a community, a trip type or a business segment. Broad "we sell everything" agencies compete on price alone.
• Publish useful pages: destination, route and visa information that answers real questions earns search traffic over time.
• Consider metasearch for consumer flight sales once your prices and booking flow are stable.
• For B2B, sell in person: visit agencies, train them on your portal and agree clear deposit or credit terms.
• Show trust signals: your registration or licence number, protection details where they apply, and plain cancellation and refund terms.
• Answer where customers ask: email, phone and the messaging apps common in your market.

Launch checklist

1. Business model and target customer written down.
2. Company registered and travel licence or registration granted.
3. Protection arranged where required (for example ATOL or a bond).
4. Supplier route agreed: consolidator contract or IATA accreditation and GDS contract.
5. Hotel and other content sources signed.
6. Booking platform configured with markups, taxes and branding.
7. Payment gateway live and PCI DSS scope confirmed.
8. Terms, privacy policy and cancellation rules published.
9. Test bookings, voids and refunds completed end to end.
10. Back-office and reconciliation routine in place before the first real sale.

Where ReservationHub fits

ReservationHub supplies the technology step. The hosted Subscription Cloud Edition goes live in 24 hours, the Source Code Edition lets you self-host and own the code, and the TripGic Travel API serves developers through REST/JSON. For a consumer booking site, see the B2C travel portal; to launch under your own brand without owning code, see the white-label travel portal.

Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport are pre-integrated. Accredited agencies can use their own GDS credentials; non-IATA agencies sell through consolidator connections. NDC content comes through aggregators including Verteil, Duffel, Travel NDC and Babylon NDC, and low-cost carriers through Travel Fusion, among 110+ integrations listed on our partners page. The uptime SLA is 99.5%, and ReservationHub's PCI DSS compliance is through the IATA PCI DSS programme.