I Built a White Label Travel Portal for Indian Agencies - Here's What I Learned

Source: Dev.to

The Big Technical Challenges

Every Agency Needs Their Own Website

Each agency requires a dedicated, branded portal to attract and retain customers.

Flight APIs Are a Nightmare

Integrating multiple airline APIs involves handling inconsistent data formats, rate limits, and frequent downtime.

Indian Payments Are Different

Local payment methods such as UPI, Paytm, and other wallets dominate over credit cards, requiring specialized gateway integrations.

WhatsApp > Email in India

Travel agents and their customers prefer WhatsApp for communication. Email notifications saw almost no usage, while WhatsApp integration became the top‑requested feature.

Making It Fast

• Caching flight search results – Prices don’t change every second, so caching reduces API calls.
• Result: Page loads in under 100 ms; search results appear in ~2 seconds instead of 10 seconds.

Tech Stack Choices

(Details omitted for brevity; focus on the architecture that supports multi‑tenant isolation, caching layers, and WhatsApp integration.)

Current Status

• 50+ agencies are actively using the platform.

What I’m Still Figuring Out

• Refund handling: Each airline API has its own refund process, making a unified workflow challenging.

Biggest Lessons

Cache Everything

90 % of performance gains came from aggressive caching. Avoid hitting databases or external APIs unless absolutely necessary.

Know Your Market

Spent weeks on email notifications that no one used. A two‑day WhatsApp integration became the #1 requested feature.

Start Simple

Initially over‑engineered the multi‑tenant architecture. A simpler MVP would have accelerated launch.

One Small Feature Can Sell Everything

A trivial WhatsApp booking confirmation turned out to be the most cited reason agencies signed up.

B2B SaaS in India Is Different

Payment preferences lean heavily toward UPI and Paytm rather than credit cards.

The Business Model

• Aggregator commission: 25‑30 % per booking.
• Our model: Flat fee of ₹5,000‑10,000 per month per agency.

The Math

(Insert simple cost‑benefit calculations showing how the flat fee compares favorably to commission‑based pricing.)

What’s Next

• Add a hotel booking module (currently only flights are supported).

Open for Feedback

I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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