Frequently asked questions
Platform and company questions, plus FAQs for products and verticals. For detailed capabilities, visit the product or solution pages.
Your questions, answered
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What is Elkanio?
Elkanio builds a complete travel technology platform: twelve modular products that cover distribution and booking, supplier connectivity, mid-office finance, CRM, analytics, loyalty and customer experience. Teams use the products together or adopt them in phases.
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How do the products relate to each other?
Every product runs on the same core: Synapse, a unified travel API and order model across nine verticals. That shared foundation means supply, documents and events look the same across channels, and finance and customer workflows stay in step.
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Where is data hosted?
Data residency is offered in India, Singapore, EU & Dubai. Data stays in region, and the platform is designed to be GDPR-ready.
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What service levels do you commit to?
The public gateway targets a 99.99% uptime SLA. Detailed SLAs and support terms are part of the contract and depend on the modules you run.
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Can we start with one product and add others later?
Yes. Many teams begin with supplier connectivity through Synapse or with a B2B portal through Nucleus, then add other products as the programme grows. Because the platform is modular, you do not need new integrations to expand.
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How do we get a demo or sandbox access?
Use the Request a demo link on this page or at the top of the site. Technical teams can start in a sandbox with Synapse and then move to live suppliers by market.
FAQs by product
Nucleus
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What is Elkanio Nucleus?
Nucleus is a B2B travel booking platform for agencies, consolidators and TMCs. It gives a master agency a branded portal to distribute flights, hotels and other verticals to sub-agents and corporate clients, with markup rules, credit limits and wallets managed centrally.
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Does Nucleus support multi-tier sub-agent hierarchies?
Yes. Nucleus is built around a multi-tier architecture: master agency, sub-agencies, sub-sub-agencies and corporate accounts, each with their own credit, deposits, markups and reporting.
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Can Nucleus be white-labelled on our own domain?
Yes. Portals run under your brand, colours and domain. Sub-agencies can also receive white-labelled dashboards of their own.
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How are markups and commissions controlled in Nucleus?
A rules engine prices every segment per tier. Rules can be set by supplier, airline, cabin, destination, product or agency, as a percentage or flat amount, per currency and with effective dates, and sub-agencies can add their own markup on top within limits you set.
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How does Nucleus handle credit and payments for sub-agents?
Each agency has a credit limit, deposits and a prepaid wallet. Bookings draw on the balance in real time, low-balance alerts go out automatically, and access is restored as soon as a payment is recorded in Vector.
Nova
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What is Elkanio Nova?
Nova is a white-label B2C travel booking engine. It gives travel brands a consumer-facing website and mobile experience for flights, hotels and ancillaries, connected to the same supply as the rest of the Elkanio platform.
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Can we customise the Nova front end?
Nova ships with a responsive default theme and can also be used headless, so your team can build a fully custom interface on top of the booking engine and APIs.
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Which payment methods does Nova support?
Nova integrates with PCI-DSS compliant third-party payment gateways and supports cards, digital wallets and localised bank transfers across currencies. Card data is tokenised by the gateway and never stored by Elkanio.
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Which travel products can a Nova site sell?
Flights from GDS, NDC and LCC sources, hotels from bedbanks and your own Nexus contracts, plus activities, insurance, visa, cab, bus, ferry and cruise, all in one basket.
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Can travellers manage bookings themselves on Nova?
Yes. Travellers get accounts with saved travellers, trip history, documents and eligible self-service changes and cancellation requests, with Pulse handling the notifications.
Orbit
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What is Elkanio Orbit?
Orbit is a corporate travel management tool and self-booking tool. Employees book within policy while finance and travel managers get approval workflows, spend controls and reporting.
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How does the Orbit policy engine work?
Policies can be defined by employee designation, department or budget, with hard and soft mandates. Out-of-policy requests are routed through configurable multi-level approval matrices.
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Does Orbit integrate with HR and finance systems?
Orbit takes employee profiles, departments and cost centres from your HR system through the API, and sends reconciled spend and invoices to finance through Vector.
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Can Orbit use our negotiated corporate rates?
Yes. Negotiated airline and hotel rates are loaded as contracts and shown beside public fares, so policy can prefer them and reporting shows how often they are used.
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Does Orbit help with duty of care?
Travel managers can see who is travelling where by trip, and disruption alerts and rebooking options reach travellers through Pulse.
Cluster
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What is Elkanio Cluster?
Cluster is group travel booking software. It manages group blocks, supplier quotes, passenger data collection and payments for groups of any size.
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How does Cluster collect passenger details?
Group leaders or individual travellers receive secure links to enter their own details and documents, replacing spreadsheets and email threads.
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Can groups pay separately?
Yes. Cluster supports a single master invoice or split payments where each traveller pays their own share against the group booking.
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Does Cluster manage seat and room blocks?
Yes. Blocks are held with their deposit and release dates, names are assigned as travellers are collected, and unsold inventory is released before penalty dates.
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What documents does Cluster produce for suppliers and ground teams?
Rooming lists, passenger manifests, meal and seat preference lists and document status reports are generated from the collected data and can be shared with airlines, hotels and ground handlers.
Synapse
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What is Elkanio Synapse?
Synapse is a unified travel API. It normalises airlines (GDS, NDC and LCC), hotels, activities, insurance, visa, cab, bus, ferry and cruise supply into one REST API with a single schema.
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What does “agentic self-healing” mean in Synapse?
When a supplier changes its response format, a supervised agent detects the drift, proposes a mapping patch, replays cached real traffic against it and promotes the fix behind a versioned mapping with rollback. Engineers are notified of every change.
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Is there a sandbox?
Yes. The sandbox uses the same mappings and agents as production with simulated supplier responses, so integrations can be built and tested before go-live.
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Is Synapse REST or GraphQL?
REST, described by a published OpenAPI 3 schema, with JSON responses, webhooks for order events, per-key rate limits and idempotency keys.
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Can we use Synapse without the other Elkanio products?
Yes. Synapse is sold on its own for teams building their own front ends. Every other Elkanio product also runs on it, so adding Nucleus, Nova or Vector later needs no new integration.
NDC
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What is Elkanio NDC?
Elkanio NDC is a flight NDC aggregator API. It connects to airlines using IATA’s New Distribution Capability standard and normalises their differing implementations into one schema.
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Why does NDC matter for travel sellers?
Airlines increasingly release continuous pricing, rich content and ancillaries only through NDC channels. An aggregator lets you sell that content without building and maintaining each airline connection yourself.
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Does Elkanio NDC work with our existing GDS content?
Yes. NDC content is returned alongside GDS and LCC results through Synapse, so agents and booking engines see one combined result set.
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Does Elkanio NDC support servicing after the booking?
Yes. Changes, cancellations, refunds and involuntary schedule changes are handled against the airline order through the same API, with the results recorded in Vector.
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Do we need to certify with each airline ourselves?
No. Elkanio holds the airline connections and keeps up with each carrier’s schema versions. You integrate once with Synapse and enable airlines per market.
Nexus
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What is Elkanio Nexus?
Nexus is a travel supplier extranet and contracting system. It lets you load your own negotiated airline fares and contracted hotel, transfer and activity rates, and distribute them next to GDS, NDC, LCC and aggregator supply.
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Can Nexus hold airline fares as well as hotel contracts?
Yes, and for most customers flights are the larger volume. Negotiated, private, consolidator and series fares are loaded by carrier, route, booking class and travel period with fare rules, baggage, commission and validity, and appear in the same search as public GDS, NDC and LCC fares.
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Do suppliers need to be technical to use Nexus?
No. Suppliers receive secure logins to manage their own fares, rates, allotments and stop-sales through a web interface; no API integration is required.
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Where do Nexus fares and rates appear?
Once loaded, contracted fares and rates are available across your Elkanio products and API feeds, including Nucleus, Nova, Orbit and Synapse, with channel-specific markups.
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Can Nexus model complex contract terms?
Yes. For flights: routes, booking classes, travel and sales periods, fare rules, baggage, commission and validity. For hotels: seasons, weekend and event supplements, early-bird and long-stay offers, child and occupancy policies, meal plans, cancellation terms and blackout dates. All modelled as terms the booking engine enforces.
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How are allotments and stop-sales handled?
Seat blocks and hotel allotments are tracked per contract with release periods; stop-sales and close-outs can be set by date, flight or room type, with alerts as inventory runs low.
Compass
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What is Elkanio Compass?
Compass is travel CRM software built for agencies. It manages enquiries from every channel, builds quotations from live inventory and tracks leads through to booking.
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How is Compass different from a generic CRM?
Compass understands itineraries. Quotes pull live flights and hotels from the platform, render as interactive web pages and can be paid for directly, without copying data between systems.
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Which channels does Compass consolidate?
Web forms, email, WhatsApp and social messaging enquiries land in one queue with assignment and follow-up rules.
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How are enquiries assigned to agents?
Rules by destination expertise, language, client tier or current workload assign each enquiry, with response-time targets and escalation when they are missed.
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What happens after a Compass quote is accepted?
The booking is created on the platform, the invoice and receipts are issued by Vector, and the customer record continues into Pulse for the trip and Quantum for loyalty.
Vector
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What is Elkanio Vector?
Vector is travel agency accounting software and a mid-office automation layer. It reconciles bookings against BSP and supplier statements, issues invoices and posts entries to your ledger.
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Does Vector handle GST and VAT?
Yes. Vector applies region-specific tax rules, including GST for India and VAT for other markets, and produces compliant invoices and reports.
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Can Vector integrate with our ERP?
Yes. Reconciled general-ledger entries can be pushed to existing ERP and accounting systems through Vector’s integrations.
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What does Vector reconcile?
BSP and airline statements, LCC and bedbank statements, payment gateway settlements and sub-agent receipts are matched to bookings automatically, with exceptions queued for review.
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Does Vector manage supplier payments?
Vector tracks supplier payables with due dates and statements, so finance can schedule payments, avoid late fees and see cash flow against upcoming departures.
Cortex
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What is Elkanio Cortex?
Cortex is travel business intelligence software and MIS. It turns booking, search and finance data into executive dashboards and predictive analytics.
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What can we track in Cortex?
Search-to-book ratios, transaction value, supplier yields, sub-agent performance and booking trends, updated in real time rather than at month end.
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Does Cortex forecast demand?
Yes. Cortex applies machine-learning models to historical data to forecast seasonal demand and highlight trends before they show up in reports.
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Where does Cortex get its data?
From the platform itself: searches and bookings from Synapse, Nucleus and Nova, finance from Vector, enquiries from Compass and loyalty from Quantum. No exports or connectors are needed.
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Can we get Cortex data into our own warehouse?
Yes. Scheduled exports and a data feed are available alongside the dashboards and scheduled PDF or web reports.
Quantum
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What is Elkanio Quantum?
Quantum is a travel loyalty platform. It lets travel brands run points, tiers and rewards programmes across every product they sell.
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How are points earned and redeemed?
Accrual rules can be set by booking value, supplier or class of service. Redemption is built into checkout so travellers can combine points and cash on the same booking.
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Does Quantum support membership tiers?
Yes. Tiers such as Silver, Gold and Platinum can be configured with automatic qualification and tier-specific benefits.
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Can partners take part in the programme?
Yes. Third-party earn and burn partners can be connected so members earn on partner spend or redeem points with them.
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How is points liability tracked?
Outstanding points and their value are carried into Vector so finance sees the liability against transaction volume, and Cortex reports member activity and redemption rates.
Pulse
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What is Elkanio Pulse?
Pulse is a travel customer experience platform for the post-booking journey: notifications, disruption handling, support conversations and contextual cross-sell.
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How does Pulse handle disruptions?
When the platform detects a schedule change or cancellation, Pulse triggers the traveller communication and rebooking workflow automatically and hands the case to your team with full context.
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Which channels does Pulse support?
Email, SMS and WhatsApp, with conversations consolidated for agents alongside the booking.
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Can travellers manage their trip themselves?
Yes. A branded trip page lets travellers see the itinerary, download documents and request eligible changes or cancellations, which flow back into the booking.
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Does Pulse collect feedback?
Yes. Post-trip surveys and reviews are sent automatically, results appear in Cortex, and completed journeys can award Quantum points.
By need and audience
Deep dives live on the solution pages. Explore them here:
Travel management companies
Agent desk, corporate self-booking and mid-office
Online travel agencies
Scale search, conversion and ancillaries
Corporate travel offices
Policy, approvals, spend and duty of care
New B2B travel companies
Launch a B2B agency without building a stack
Automation & efficiency
Remove manual work from operations
Inventory & API connectivity
One integration to every supplier
Customer loyalty & growth
Retention, personalisation, lifetime value
FAQs by travel vertical
Flights
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Do we need our own GDS or airline contracts?
Your existing contracts and credentials continue to work and are connected through Synapse. Where Elkanio holds airline NDC or aggregator connections, they can be enabled per market alongside yours.
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Can agents see which channel a fare came from?
Yes. Every result carries its source (GDS, NDC, LCC or your negotiated fare) and the same result can be filtered or sorted by it, while booking and servicing stay identical.
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How are changes and refunds handled across channels?
Through one order model. Voluntary changes, cancellations, refunds and reissues use the same API whichever channel issued the ticket, and involuntary schedule changes are surfaced to your team and travellers through Pulse.
Hotels
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How are duplicate properties handled?
Synapse maps supplier property IDs to one property record, merges content and shows one room list with the source and price per room, so the traveller compares rooms rather than suppliers.
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Can we prefer our own contracted rates?
Yes. Rules can prefer Nexus contracts by property, market or margin, or simply show the best price with the source marked.
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What happens with a cancellation close to the deadline?
Policy deadlines are stored per booking; Pulse can remind the traveller and your team before a deadline, and cancellations and refunds run through the same order model.
Activities
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Can we load our own tours and excursions?
Yes. Your own tours, transfers and multi-day activities are loaded in Nexus with their pricing rules and sold beside marketplace supply or packaged with hotels and flights.
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How do travellers receive activity tickets?
Vouchers and QR tickets are issued at booking and kept on the traveller's trip page, with reminders before the activity sent through Pulse.
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What if a flight change makes the traveller miss an activity?
Pulse surfaces the conflict when the schedule changes, and the activity can be rebooked or cancelled through the same order within its policy.
Insurance
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Is insurance offered automatically?
It can be offered as a step in the booking flow, as a timed offer after booking through Pulse, or both, with the rules set per channel and market.
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Where does the traveller find the policy?
On the booking confirmation and on their Pulse trip page, alongside tickets and vouchers, with the insurer's claims contacts.
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Can we sell insurance under our own brand?
Policies are issued by the connected insurer; the offer, comparison and documents are presented under your brand within the platform.
Visa
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Does Elkanio issue visas?
No. Visas are issued by governments. Applications are processed through StampThePassport, the visa platform connected to Elkanio, while the platform handles the requirement check, application data, documents, fees and status tracking as part of the booking.
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How are traveller documents kept secure?
Documents are collected through secure links, encrypted at rest and in transit, retained only as long as the process and the law require, and hosted in the region agreed in your contract.
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Can we process visas for large groups?
Yes. Cluster collects documents and tracks applications per traveller with a completion view for the whole group, which suits pilgrimage, education and corporate travel.
Cab
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Can we sell our own transfer fleet?
Yes. Local fleets, shuttles and chauffeur services are loaded in Nexus with their pricing rules and sold beside network supply.
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What happens when the flight is delayed?
The transfer is attached to the flight segment. When the schedule changes, the pickup is adjusted and the traveller, and where supported the driver, are informed through Pulse.
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Do corporate travel policies apply to cabs?
Yes. Orbit applies vehicle class and spend rules, and rides are invoiced to the traveller's cost centre.
Bus
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Which markets is bus inventory available in?
Coverage follows the connected platforms: redBus and TBO for India and neighbouring markets, Distribusion for Europe and beyond. Platforms are enabled per market in your configuration.
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Can travellers pick seats?
Yes. Seat maps, boarding and drop points are chosen at booking where the operator provides them.
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How do refunds work?
Operator cancellation policies are applied automatically and refunds run through the same order model as every other vertical.
Ferry
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Can we book vehicles on ferries?
Yes. Vehicle types and dimensions are captured at booking where the operator supports them, alongside passengers and cabins.
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What if the sailing is rescheduled?
Schedule changes are surfaced to your team and the traveller through Pulse, with rebooking or refund through the same order model.
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Which routes are covered?
Coverage follows the connected operators, currently Starlite Ferries and 2GO Travel in the Philippines, and further operators are enabled per market as they are connected.
Cruise
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How are cruise deposits and instalments handled?
Payment schedules are stored against the booking. Pulse reminds the traveller before each due date and Vector tracks receivables and commission.
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Can we sell flights and hotels with the cruise?
Yes. Pre- and post-cruise flights, hotels and transfers are booked in the same itinerary and invoice.
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Does Elkanio handle group sailings?
Yes. Cluster holds cabin blocks with release dates, collects traveller details and produces manifests for the cruise line.
Prefer a walkthrough?
See how the products fit together and discuss your use cases in a live demo.