Host agency websites tend to read the same way. Infrastructure, community, support, freedom to focus on what you love. Most of it is true, and none of it tells you whether a particular host suits the trips you sell. The questions to ask a host agency are the ones its website will never answer.
That gap matters more if you sell bespoke travel. A host built around cruises, resorts and packaged tours can be excellent at what it does and still be the wrong home for someone putting together a twelve-night trip across Botswana and Zambia with six suppliers and four currencies in it. The model works well. The fit is the question.
Here are nine questions to ask a host agency before you sign, along with what to listen for in the answers.
1. Does the way they make money suit the way you earn?
Commission splits are the first number everyone compares, and they are worth understanding properly. Splits generally run anywhere from 60/40 to 90/10 in the advisor’s favour, and 70/30 is a common starting point for newer advisors. Many hosts move you up as you sell more. Fora, for example, starts advisors at 70 per cent and moves them to 80 once they pass $300,000 in sales. Independent directories such as Host Agency Reviews are a useful cross-check on what individual hosts publish.
The split is only half the picture though. Suppliers pay somewhere between 7 and 20 per cent commission depending on what you are booking, so the same split produces very different income depending on your product mix. Then there are fees on top. Setup fees of $50 to $250 are common, with monthly fees of $25 to $100 and sometimes a small charge per booking.
If you sell tailor-made trips, there is a further wrinkle. A three-week safari can take twenty hours to design and quote. A commission percentage does not care how long it took. This is why many bespoke advisors charge planning or service fees alongside commission, so ask early whether the host allows that, whether they take a cut of those fees, and how they are collected.
Work through a real example
Take your average trip value and your typical commission rate, apply the split, subtract the monthly and per-booking fees, and see what lands. Then do it again at the volume you expect in year two. A better split with higher fees can be worse for a low-volume, high-value business, and better for a busy one. Our breakdown of what safari tour operators actually earn is a reasonable sense-check on the numbers you land on.
2. Can their software actually build the trips you sell?
This is where a lot of bespoke advisors come unstuck, because the technology usually arrives as part of the package rather than as something you choose.
Plenty of host platforms are built around bookings that have one supplier and one currency. A resort week, a cruise, a packaged tour. Ask to build something of your own during the joining conversation, not a sample trip they suggest. Something with several countries, internal flights, transfers, park fees and a couple of properties that bill in different currencies.
Things worth checking while you are in there:
- Whether one trip can hold more than one currency without you converting everything up front
- Whether you can put different markups on different parts of the trip
- Whether the price updates when you change a camp, a date or a season, or whether you start again
- Whether the proposal looks like your business, or like the host’s
- What it looks like on a phone, since that is where a good share of your clients will open it
3. Do their supplier relationships cover your destinations?
Supplier access is one of the strongest reasons to join a host, and it is also the easiest thing to be vague about in marketing.
Most host agency material leads with the big consortia and preferred partner programmes. Those are genuinely valuable if you sell luxury hotels. They are less relevant if your product is owner-run camps in the Selous, a mobile operation in the Serengeti or a DMC you have worked with for a decade.
So ask specifically. Name five suppliers you use regularly and ask whether the host has a relationship with each one. Ask what the commission rate is with those particular suppliers, not the headline average. Ask whether you can keep booking your existing contacts and still earn through the host, and whether the rates you have negotiated yourself carry across.
If you work through DMCs, ask how those bookings are handled, since a DMC arrangement behaves differently from a hotel commission and not every host is set up for it. Check which accreditation you would be booking under as well, whether that is IATAN, TIDS or an equivalent, and what it entitles you to.
4. Who decides the price the client sees?
Pricing control varies more than people expect and it goes to the heart of your margin.
In a straightforward commission model, the supplier sets the price and you earn a percentage. In a net rate model, you receive a rate and decide what to charge on top. The second gives you far more control over your margin and requires you to know your costs properly.
Questions worth asking: can I set my own markup, and is there a cap on it? Can I charge a planning fee, and do you take a share? Do you require me to publish prices in a particular way? If I want to discount to win a booking, is that my call?
5. When does the money actually reach you?
Traditional commission is paid after travel. On a safari booked eighteen months ahead, that means designing the trip, servicing the client and waiting a year and a half to be paid for it. Meanwhile the deposits have gone to lodges and your own costs carry on.
So ask three things. When is commission released, at booking, at deposit or after the guests come home? How often are payments run? And who pays the suppliers, you or the host?
Currency matters here too. If your clients pay in dollars or pounds and your camps invoice in rand, pula or shillings, ask who carries the conversion and at what rate. On trips of this size, a couple of percentage points on exchange is real money.
6. What support exists after the client says yes?
Host agencies differ enormously here. Some handle supplier payments and reconciliation for you. Some provide the tools and leave the work with you. Some are mainly a set of credentials and a commission processing service.
All three are legitimate offerings at different prices. Just find out which one you are buying. A useful question: walk me through what happens when a client changes their dates six weeks before departure. Who tells the lodges, who reissues the documents, who handles the money?
Ask about support hours as well. If your suppliers are in Africa and your clients are in North America, a host operating a single timezone helpdesk will shape your day more than you would like.
7. Who owns your clients?
There is no universal rule here; client ownership comes down to what your particular contract says rather than an industry standard.
Two separate things are at stake. The relationship, meaning your right to keep working with those people, and the data, meaning the contact details, preferences and booking history sitting in a system.
Ask whether the contract states in writing that your client list is yours. Ask whether there is a non-solicitation clause preventing you from contacting past clients for a period after you leave, since these are enforceable and more common than advisors expect. And ask whether you can export your client and booking records at any time, in a format another system can read.
Where all your records live in a platform the host owns, your access to that platform ends when the contract does. That is worth knowing on day one rather than on the day you leave. If you are the one building that list in the first place, our guide on how tour operators get clients covers where the good ones come from.
8. What happens if you want to leave?
Asking about the exit at the start feels awkward. Everyone in the industry asks it anyway, and a good host will answer without hesitating.
The main points to cover:
- Notice. How much do you have to give, and does the agreement renew automatically if you say nothing?
- Trips already sold. Bookings made under a host’s credentials generally belong to that host, so establish what happens to trips that have not yet travelled, and whether you still receive commission on them.
- Non-compete. Some contracts restrict you from advising for a period afterwards. Anything beyond twelve to twenty-four months is generally considered unusually restrictive, and terms like “competitor” should be defined rather than left vague.
- Your data. Confirm you can take your client list, itineraries and booking history with you, and how long after leaving you can still get at them.
Plenty of advisors have a lawyer read the agreement before signing. For a decision that shapes several years of your business, a couple of hours of legal time is proportionate. Industry associations such as ASTA are a reasonable place to get context on what counts as standard.
9. What do their current advisors say?
Testimonials on a website are chosen. A conversation is not.
Ask to speak to two advisors doing work like yours: similar trip complexity, similar destinations, ideally similar size. A host can be genuinely excellent for someone selling Caribbean resorts and a poor fit for multi-stop African travel, and only someone doing your kind of work will know. For a longer version of one of those conversations, read how Southern Drift Travel got going.
Questions that get useful answers:
- How long before you were properly up and running?
- What did you not expect when you joined?
- What do you still do outside their system?
- How quickly does support come back to you, and who answers?
- How did commission timing affect your cash flow in the first year?
- Knowing what you know now, would you join again?
How host agencies charge, at a glance
| Model | How it works | Worth checking |
|---|---|---|
| Commission split | You keep an agreed share of supplier commission | What triggers a better split, and how long it takes to get there |
| Flat membership fee | Monthly or annual fee, you keep more or all commission | What the fee covers, and what is charged separately |
| Fee plus split | A smaller fee alongside a share of commission | Setup fees and per-booking charges on top |
| Net rates | You receive a cost price and set your own selling price | Whether markup is capped, and who holds the client contract |
Choosing a host agency: before you sign
- You have worked out your real earnings on a typical trip, after split and fees
- You have built one of your own complicated itineraries in their system
- You have checked five of your regular suppliers by name
- You know who sets the client-facing price and whether you can charge planning fees
- You know when commission is released and who pays the suppliers
- You have seen what happens to a booking that changes after confirmation
- The contract states in writing that your clients are yours
- You know the notice period, the renewal terms and any non-compete
- You have spoken to two advisors selling trips like yours
Where we sit
Waybird offers a hosted option alongside its software, so we are not neutral here. What we would say is that these are the questions we would want asked of us, and they are worth putting to every host you are considering, including this one.
If you are still weighing the model itself rather than a particular host, our guide on whether you need a host agency goes through the case for and against, and our 2026 guide to tour operator software covers the technology side in more depth.
Frequently asked questions
What are the most important questions to ask a host agency?
Four cover most of the risk: how the money works after the split and the fees, whether the software can build the trips you actually sell, who owns the client relationship, and what happens on the way out. The rest of the questions to ask a host agency are refinements on those four.
What is a host agency?
A host agency is an established travel company that independent advisors work under. You get access to its accreditation, supplier relationships, booking technology and back-office support, and in return the host takes a share of your commission, a fee, or both. You usually keep your own brand and clients, though the details vary by contract.
What commission split should a travel advisor expect?
Splits generally range from 60/40 to 90/10 in the advisor’s favour, with 70/30 common for advisors starting out and better splits usually tied to sales volume. The split alone does not tell you what you will earn, since supplier commission rates, monthly fees, setup fees and per-booking charges all affect the final figure.
Do I keep my clients if I leave a host agency?
That depends entirely on your contract rather than on any industry-wide rule. Check whether the agreement says your client list belongs to you, whether there is a non-solicitation clause covering past clients, and whether you can export your records in a usable format. Bookings made under the host’s credentials generally belong to the host, so also ask about trips that have not travelled yet.
Are host agencies suitable for bespoke and safari travel?
Some are, though many are built around cruises, resorts and packaged tours where one booking involves one supplier. If you sell multi-country trips with several suppliers and currencies, test the host’s itinerary software on a real trip of your own and check their supplier relationships against the camps, DMCs and operators you actually use.
What should I check in a host agency contract?
Client ownership, non-solicitation and non-compete terms, the notice period, whether the agreement renews automatically, what happens to bookings that have not yet travelled, whether you can export your data, and how and when commission is paid. Many advisors have a lawyer review it before signing.
