B2B (business-to-business) in travel is the trade between travel companies: hotels, bedbanks, tour operators and agencies selling rooms, transfers, tours and packages to one another at trade prices. The company at the end of the chain adds its own earnings and sells to the traveler, so a single hotel night can pass through several businesses before it is booked.
Most travelers never see this layer. They book with a travel agency, an online travel agency (OTA) or a tour operator, and that company may have bought the room from a wholesaler that holds the contract with the hotel.
B2B, B2C and B2B2C in travel
The three labels describe who the buyer is, not what is sold. The same hotel room can be sold all three ways on the same day.
| Model | Who buys | Example | Whose price the traveler sees |
|---|---|---|---|
| B2C (business-to-consumer) | The traveler | A hotel's own website, or an agency selling a package to a family | The seller's own price |
| B2B (business-to-business) | Another travel company | A hotel contracting rooms to a tour operator, or a bedbank supplying an agency | The reseller's price, built on the trade price |
| B2B2C (business-to-business-to-consumer) | The traveler, through a second company | A tour operator's hotels booked on a partner agency's website, under the agency's brand | The price of the company the traveler books with |
In practice most travel companies mix the three. A tour operator can sell packages to travelers on its own website, open the same hotels to partner agencies, and supply the booking engine another brand runs. What changes from one model to the next is who holds the customer relationship, whose price the traveler sees, and whose terms apply when a booking changes.
Who sells to whom
A travel booking usually involves some of the companies below. Not every booking uses all of them, and one company can play more than one role.
- Hotels and other suppliers. Hotels, villas, transfer companies and tour providers own the product. They set the base terms, then sell directly, through online channels and under contract to trade partners.
- Channel managers. Software a hotel uses to send its rates and availability to many sales channels at once and to receive bookings back. A channel manager carries the hotel's data, but it does not own rooms or set prices.
- Bedbanks and wholesalers. Companies with contracts or connections to many hotels that resell those rooms to other travel businesses, usually at net rates. The bedbank guide covers them in detail.
- Tour operators and incoming agencies. Tour operators contract hotels, transfers and excursions and combine them into packages. Incoming agencies and DMCs (destination management companies) do similar work inside one destination and look after travelers that other companies send them.
- Travel agencies and sub-agencies. Agencies sell to travelers and buy from hotels, tour operators and bedbanks. A sub-agency sells through a larger agency's contracts instead of its own.
- OTAs. Online travel agencies sell to travelers on the web. They source rooms from hotels, often through channel managers, and from wholesalers.
- The traveler. Pays the final price and usually deals only with the last company in the chain.
A simple chain looks like this. A beach hotel in Antalya signs a season contract with a tour operator. The operator adds airport transfers and offers the package to partner agencies abroad. One of those agencies sells it to a family with its own margin on top. The hotel, the operator and the agency all take part in the same booking, yet only the agency speaks to the family.
What is a B2B hotel rate?
A B2B hotel rate is the price a hotel or wholesaler gives a trade partner instead of the public. It comes in two forms, and any one rate is either the first or the second, never both.
Net rates
A net rate is quoted without the reseller's earnings in it. The reseller adds a markup and decides the selling price, within the limits of the contract. Bedbank rates are usually net, and so are many direct contracts with hotels.
Commissionable rates
A commissionable rate is already the price the guest pays. The reseller adds nothing on top. Instead, the supplier pays it a commission out of that price. This model is common in agreements made directly with hotels.
Markup is not margin
Resellers working on net rates express their earnings in two ways, and confusing them is one of the costliest mistakes in B2B pricing. Markup measures the earnings against the net rate. Margin measures the same earnings against the selling price.
| Pricing decision | Net rate | Selling price | Markup | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Add 15 to the net rate | 100 | 115 | 15% | 13.04% |
| Aim for a 15% margin | 100 | 117.65 | 17.65% | 15% |
Adding 15 to a net rate of 100 is a 15 percent markup but only a 13.04 percent margin, because the same 15 is measured against 115. A company that needs a 15 percent margin has to apply a 17.65 percent markup. When a contract, a spreadsheet and a pricing screen do not say which of the two they mean, the gap repeats on every booking.
How B2B selling works in practice
Trade partners reach a seller's products in a few different ways. Most sellers offer more than one, because partners differ in size and in the systems they use.
A partner login or extranet
The seller gives each partner a login to a booking website, often called an extranet or a B2B portal. The partner searches, sees its own trade price and books by hand. It is the quickest way to start and suits partners that make bookings one at a time.
API and XML connections
Larger partners connect their own booking system or website to the seller's system, so searches and bookings run automatically. Many established travel connections exchange XML messages, while newer ones often use JSON. Either way, both sides test the connection before real bookings flow through it, and each side has to match the other's hotel and room codes to its own.
Channel managers on the supply side
When a hotel already works with a channel manager, a trade buyer can receive that hotel's rates and availability through the channel manager instead of waiting for emails. Rate changes and closed dates then arrive through the same connection, and nobody has to key them in again.
Contracts and rate spreadsheets
A lot of B2B business still starts with a signed contract and a rate spreadsheet. The sheet holds seasons, room types, prices by occupancy, child rules and allotments, the rooms a hotel holds for the buyer on set dates. Someone has to load all of it into a system correctly, and a mistake made at this step travels all the way to the traveler's price.
What is a sub-agency?
A sub-agency is a travel agency that sells through a larger agency or tour operator instead of contracting suppliers itself. The larger company, often called the main agency or the provider, holds the contracts with hotels and suppliers. The sub-agency gets access to part of that range at a price agreed with the provider, books through the provider's system, and adds its own margin when it sells to its customers.
Both sides gain from the arrangement. The sub-agency can sell hotels and allotments it could not negotiate alone, and the provider reaches customers in cities and markets where it has no office of its own. The points they need to agree on are just as clear: which products the sub-agency may sell, at what price, under which cancellation and payment terms, and what it may see of the provider's buying price. Usually the answer to the last point is nothing: the sub-agency sees the price it pays, not what the provider paid.
What a B2B seller needs to control
Opening products to trade partners is the easy part. Keeping the right terms in front of each partner is the ongoing work, and these controls matter most.
- Who can see which products. A partner should see only the destinations and products opened to it. Sellers often keep some hotels for direct sale, and many supplier contracts are valid only for bookings from certain source markets, the countries a sale is made from.
- Price floors and rate parity. A minimum selling price stops discounts and promotions from pushing a trade price too low. Many suppliers also expect rate parity: their rooms should not be offered to the public below the price they publish themselves.
- Cancellation terms. A partner's free cancellation deadline should not fall later than the deadline you have with your supplier. If it does, a late cancellation leaves the penalty with you.
- Payment terms. Agree when each partner pays, in which currency, and what happens to a payment when a booking is canceled.
- Confidentiality. A partner should see the price it pays, not your buying price, your markup or the terms another partner receives.
Common mistakes
- Treating markup and margin as the same number. A 15 percent target entered as the wrong one costs money on every booking.
- Sending one net rate to every partner. Markets and partners need different prices, and some contract rates may not be sold outside the markets they were negotiated for.
- Showing trade rates to the public. A net rate published without a markup undercuts the hotel's own price and can breach the contract.
- Loading the same hotel from several sources without matching them. The result is near-duplicate listings, and partners cannot tell which one to book.
- Sharing one login among several partners. Afterwards nobody can tell who booked what, or under which terms.
- Emailing rate sheets. Partners keep selling from old prices long after a rate has changed.
How Adrasis handles B2B
Adrasis Console is the agency hub between supply and sales channels. On the supply side it brings direct contracts, channel managers and bedbanks into one product record. On the sales side, Sales & Distribution lets partner agencies sell your products, and the Partner API opens them to systems that connect directly.
Partner agencies under their own login
A partner agency signs in as itself, sees the products you opened to it and books at the price you set, without a shared account or a second system. You choose the market the partner sells from and the currency of the relationship. Access is closed by default: the partner sees nothing until you activate destinations for it, and you can exclude a property you keep for direct sale. Every booking is recorded under your organization with the partnership attached. You can suspend a partnership and resume it later, or revoke it when the relationship ends.
Pricing rules and one payable price
Pricing rules run from general to specific: a market default such as 12 percent on top for one source market, an override for a single agency, and rules pinned to one property, room or rate plan. Net-rate plans take your distribution markup or discount, while commissionable plans keep their guest-facing price and the supplier's commission. A minimum selling price lifts an over-discounted price back to the floor instead of losing the sale.
The partner receives one payable price. Your source amount, commission and markup are not shown to it, its own retail markup stays private from you, and partners never see each other's terms. When you are the one selling another company's products, the same model works from the other side: the products opened to you appear alongside your own, and you add your retail markup on top.
Partner API and Channel Portfolio
Partners whose systems connect directly use the Distribution Partner API, which works with JSON over HTTPS. You create a partner account, open the properties each of its profiles may see in that profile's Channel Portfolio, and issue credentials with read-only or booking scopes. From the partner account you can rotate a credential, disable it for a while or revoke it for good.
See B2B distribution and API for how partners, platforms and API clients are set up, or travel agency software for the full agency workflow.