Before you brief a developer, work through these questions — they'll shape the entire build.
Decide who books, and who just browses
Some travel portals are meant to sell directly to consumers. Others exist mainly to support agents or internal staff, with the public site as a lead-generation front end. This decision changes almost everything downstream, from the checkout flow to what needs a login.
List your actual suppliers before designing search
It's tempting to design a search experience first. Instead, start with which suppliers and APIs you'll actually connect to — flights, hotels, activities — since their data shapes what your search and results pages can realistically show.
Plan for content, not just booking logic
A portal needs destination pages, package descriptions and images long before a customer reaches checkout. Underestimating the content and admin side is one of the most common reasons launches get delayed.
Decide how payments and refunds will actually work
Payment gateway integration is usually the easy part. The harder part is agreeing internally on cancellation policies, partial payments and refund workflows — decide these before development starts, not after the first refund request comes in.
Plan the admin side as carefully as the customer side
The team running the portal day to day needs to manage inventory, pricing and bookings without depending on a developer for every change. An admin panel that's an afterthought becomes the biggest source of frustration after launch.
