Running a travel agency

Practical guides on quoting, pricing, invoicing and the tools that run a travel agency in India.

The complete map

Every NAMA guide, tool and explainer, grouped by the problem you are solving. Free tools need no account; product pages describe what NAMA does; /pricing is the source of truth for prices.

Choosing your software

Pricing, margins and money

  • How to price a tour package — markup vs margin, worked exampleFree · no account
  • Margin calculator — cost, markup and net margin on a packageFree · no account
  • BYOK calculator — what AI costs on your own keyFree · no account
  • Pricing — Compass free plan, Voyage per seat, Meridian sales-led — the canonical source for prices

Quoting and itineraries

WhatsApp and client communication

For DMCs and networks

  • DMC network — publish your rates to downstream agentsBy application
  • Storefronts — white-label storefronts on your own domain

Building NAMA

Company and trust

Running a travel agencyGuide

AI Should Hand Off to a Human Before the Customer Asks

Travellers should never have to ask for a human, and never have to repeat themselves. How a travel agency designs the handoff line: stakes, confidence, and one shared conversation thread.

Narayan Mallapur · 5 November 2026 · 4 min read

Running a travel agencyGuide

What can AI not replace in a travel agency?

A 40-year European DMC says AI does the admin and humans keep the judgement. They are right, and a Mauritius hotel rate from my own OTA years proves it from the Indian side.

Narayan Mallapur · 3 November 2026 · 3 min read

Running a travel agencyGuide

Half of travellers now plan trips with AI. Your destination pages decide if they find you.

IATA's 2026 Global Passenger Survey found 49% of travellers have used AI to plan a trip, rising to 72% in the Middle East and 57% in Asia-Pacific. When those travellers ask AI about a destination you sell, the answer is built from web pages. Here is how to make yours the page that gets quoted.

Narayan Mallapur · 31 October 2026 · 3 min read

Running a travel agencyGuide

AI Travel Recommendations: Will Your Best Trip Make the List?

Skift Research tested ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude on 21 destinations and found that nearly a third of strong-fit matches were never recommended. What that means for how your agency describes its trips.

Narayan Mallapur · 29 October 2026 · 4 min read

Running a travel agencyGuide

WhatsApp follow-up for travel leads: a practical SLA and message sequence

Most travel enquiries die between the first reply and the quote, not because the quote was wrong but because nobody followed up. Here is a five-touch sequence, a service-level rule your team can actually keep, and the messages to paste.

Narayan Mallapur · 20 October 2026 · 5 min read

Running a travel agencyGuide

Correct on paper: the Friday the Taj was closed

An itinerary can be right on paper and still fail the client. The rule it was built on changed, and nobody could have known. Here is the habit that closes that gap.

Narayan Mallapur · 20 October 2026 · 3 min read

Running a travel agencyGuide

One family, five travellers, five different trips

A family may share one booking but not one definition of a good trip. Real personalisation is an operations problem before it becomes a design feature.

Narayan Mallapur · 6 October 2026 · 4 min read

Running a travel agencyGuide

How a 3-Person Travel Agency Can Run Like a 50-Person One

Small agencies lose business to slow replies and forgotten follow-ups, not to bad service. An AI agent layer that drafts and you approve closes that gap.

Narayan Mallapur · 4 October 2026 · 5 min read

Running a travel agencyGuide

AI can write an itinerary. Can it prove the price?

AI has made itinerary writing fast. But speed without rate provenance creates a new risk: a polished quote built on numbers nobody can defend.

Narayan Mallapur · 19 September 2026 · 4 min read