In short64 plain-language definitions of the terms used across travel sales, travel CRM, and travel operations — useful whether you are evaluating tools or onboarding a new team member.
No terms match.
A
- Advance payment
- The deposit a traveller pays to confirm a booking, usually a percentage of the total, with the balance due before departure.
- All-inclusive
- A package or hotel rate that includes accommodation, all meals, and usually drinks and some activities in one price.
- Allotment
- A block of hotel rooms or seats a supplier holds for a travel business at agreed rates, released back if unsold by a set date.
B
- B2B travel
- Travel businesses selling to other travel businesses — for example a DMC selling ground services to agencies, or a wholesaler selling hotel rooms to agents.
- B2C travel
- Travel businesses selling directly to travellers.
- Booking engine
- Software that lets customers or agents search available inventory and book it online instantly.
- BSP (Business Solution Provider)
- A Meta-approved partner that provides access to the WhatsApp Business Platform, such as AiSensy or Gupshup.
C
- Cancellation policy
- The rules and charges that apply if a traveller cancels, usually on a sliding scale by how close to departure the cancellation happens.
- Commission
- The share of a sale a supplier pays a travel seller for a booking, as opposed to a markup the seller adds to a net rate.
- Consolidator
- A wholesaler that buys airline tickets in bulk or at special fares and resells them to travel agencies.
- Conversion rate
- The share of enquiries that become confirmed bookings in a given period.
- Customised package
- A trip built around a specific traveller's dates, preferences, and budget rather than sold off the shelf.
D
- DMC (destination management company)
- A local specialist that designs and delivers travel services in its own destination — hotels, transfers, guides, activities — mostly for agencies and tour operators.
- DMO (destination marketing organisation)
- A tourism board or body that promotes a destination to travellers and the travel trade, rather than selling trips.
E
- Enquiry
- A traveller's request for information or a quote about a trip; in a travel CRM each enquiry becomes a lead.
F
- FIT (free independent traveller)
- A traveller or small party on a tailor-made itinerary, as opposed to a fixed group departure.
- Fixed departure
- A pre-scheduled group trip that runs on set dates with a set itinerary.
- Follow-up
- Contacting a lead again after a quote to answer questions and move toward a booking.
G
- GDS (global distribution system)
- A network connecting travel sellers to airline, hotel, and car-rental inventory, used mainly for ticketing and reservations.
- Group booking
- A booking for a larger party travelling together, often with group rates and different payment and name-change terms.
H
- 24-hour window
- The WhatsApp Business Platform rule that businesses may send free-form replies for 24 hours after a customer's last message; after that only template messages can be sent.
I
- Inbound tour operator
- A company that delivers trips in its own country for travellers arriving from abroad, often working through overseas agents.
- Itinerary
- A structured day-by-day plan for a trip. In Tripdocks an itinerary can be built from saved templates or from scratch and sent as a branded PDF or web link.
- Itinerary builder
- The tool used to assemble an itinerary by adding flights, stays, activities, and transfers, setting a markup, and producing a branded output that stays editable up to and after booking.
L
- Lead
- A trip enquiry from a prospective traveller, captured from a channel such as a website form, an ad platform, or a messaging app.
- Lead ads
- Ad formats with a built-in form, such as Facebook and Instagram lead ads, that collect a prospect's details without leaving the platform.
- Lead capture
- The process of collecting enquiries from any channel into a single queue so none are lost in scattered inboxes or chat threads.
- Lead queue
- The shared list of new enquiries waiting to be picked up and worked by the team.
- Lead source
- Where an enquiry came from — WhatsApp, a lead ad, a website form, a referral — used to measure which channels bring bookings.
- Lead-to-booking workflow
- The end-to-end path a travel enquiry takes — from captured lead, to quote and itinerary, to confirmed reservation — managed in one place by a travel CRM.
M
- Margin
- Profit as a percentage of the selling price. A ₹12,000 sale on a ₹10,000 cost is a 16.7% margin.
- Markup
- The margin a travel business adds on top of supplier or net rates when pricing a quote.
- MCP (Model Context Protocol)
- An open standard that lets AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT connect to other software and call its tools on a user's behalf.
- Meal plan
- The meals included with a hotel stay, such as room only, bed and breakfast, half board, full board, or all-inclusive.
- MICE
- Meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions — business travel and events organised for companies.
N
- Net rate
- The price a supplier charges a travel business before the seller adds its markup.
O
- OTA (online travel agency)
- A website or app that sells travel products directly to travellers online.
- Outbound tour operator
- A company that sells trips abroad to travellers from its home market.
P
- Package
- A trip sold as a bundle of components — typically flights, hotels, transfers, and activities — at one price.
- Pax
- Travel-industry shorthand for passengers or travellers, as in "2 pax".
- Proposal
- A presentation of one or more trip options for a traveller, often combining itinerary and price.
Q
- Quote
- A priced trip proposal sent to a traveller, typically including flights, stays, activities, transfers, and a markup.
R
- Rack rate
- A supplier's standard public price, before any discount or net rate.
- Reservation
- A confirmed booking that has moved out of the quoting stage and is being tracked and managed operationally.
- Response time
- How long a new enquiry waits for its first reply — a strong predictor of whether it books.
- Roles and permissions
- Access controls that determine who on a team can see sensitive information such as pricing, supplier rates, and client contacts.
- Round-robin assignment
- A method of distributing incoming leads evenly across team members so enquiries are picked up promptly and fairly.
S
- Supplier
- A business that provides a travel component, such as an airline, hotel, transport company, guide, or activity provider.
T
- Tailor-made trip
- A trip designed from scratch around one traveller's or group's wishes.
- Template message
- A pre-approved WhatsApp message a business must use to start a conversation outside the 24-hour customer service window.
- Tour operator
- A business that designs and sells trips or packages, often combining multiple suppliers into a single product for travellers or agents.
- Transfer
- Transport between two points of a trip, such as airport to hotel or hotel to activity.
- Travel agency
- A business that sells trips to travellers, handling enquiries, quoting, and bookings on their behalf.
- Travel consultant
- An independent professional who plans and sells trips, often operating solo and handling the full lead-to-booking workflow alone.
- Travel CRM
- Customer relationship management software built for selling trips — capturing enquiries, building branded quotes and itineraries, and tracking travellers from first enquiry to confirmed booking.
U
- Upsell
- Offering a traveller a higher-value option, such as a better room or an added activity, during the sales process.
- UTM parameters
- Tags added to a link (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign and others) that record which campaign brought a visitor or lead.
V
- Validity
- How long a quote's prices are guaranteed before they may change.
- Voucher
- A document confirming a prepaid service — such as a hotel stay or transfer — that the traveller presents to the supplier.
W
- Webhook
- An HTTP POST from an external source used to deliver leads automatically into a travel CRM, with field mappings defined once.
- WhatsApp Business
- A business messaging channel used to chat with leads. Tripdocks supports multiple providers and business numbers with optional per-team routing.
- WhatsApp Business Platform
- Meta's API for businesses to send and receive WhatsApp messages at scale, accessed directly through the Cloud API or through a BSP.
- Wholesaler
- A business that buys travel inventory in bulk and resells it to agencies and operators, usually at net rates.
Y
- Yield
- Revenue earned per unit of inventory, such as per seat or room — used when pricing limited capacity.