Travel agency ancillary revenue: what else you can sell to a client who has already booked
Insurance, transfers, excursions, car hire, service fees and connectivity. Which add-ons pay, what the published rates are, and how to offer them without turning into a salesperson.
Ancillary revenue is everything an agency earns beyond the main booking: insurance, transfers, car hire, excursions, lounge access, planning and ticketing fees, connectivity. It matters for one reason. The main booking is the part where the rate is set by somebody else and shrinking, while the add-ons include the highest paying line most agencies hold, travel insurance at 20% to 37% and up to around 40% on top policies, and fees, which are kept in full.
The client is already buying most of these things. The only question is whether they buy them from you.
Why the add-ons carry the margin
Two published facts make the case better than any argument.
The first is that headline commission rates on core products are eroded by parts of the price that pay nothing. ASTA's May 2026 industry brief on non-commissionable fares finds those components cut the effective cruise commission by 20% to 25%, turning a nominal 15% into 11.7% on its worked example, and a nominal 10% into roughly 6.5% to 8.5% (ASTA, May 2026). The same brief shows it on hotels, where resort fees take a 10% rate down to an effective 8.6%, and on air, where an $800 ticket with a $300 commissionable base pays $30, or 3.75%.
The second is that a fee has no such deduction. Host Agency Reviews reports air ticket fees of around $40 domestic and $60 international, and $100 to $250 for a package, cruise or tour, charged by 49% of hosted advisors and 67% of independently accredited advisors (Host Agency Reviews, 23 May 2024). ASTA's 2026 press kit puts professional fees at $50 to several hundred dollars and treats them as normal practice, on the same footing as paying an accountant.
What else travel agents can sell
| Line | Published rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Travel insurance | 20% to 37%, up to around 40% on top policies | Highest published rate in the trade, and regulated distribution |
| Planning and service fees | $40 to $60 per air ticket, $100 to $250 per package | Kept in full, and paid whether or not the trip is commissionable |
| Car hire | around 10% of the base rate | Taxes, equipment and optional cover excluded |
| Hotel extras and upgrades | 8% to 15% on the room rate | Resort and destination fees normally excluded |
| Excursions, transfers, tickets | varies widely by operator | Small tickets, but they raise the value of a trip already sold |
| Connectivity | set by the agency in a reseller model | No stock, no logistics |
Rates in the table are from The Travel Franchise (4 April 2025) for insurance, car hire and hotels, and Host Agency Reviews (23 March 2024) for the 10% flat hotel and car default, with Onyx CenterSource confirming around 10% as the common flat hotel rate (30 June 2026).
The one to be careful with
Insurance pays best and is the most regulated. In the European Union, distributing insurance alongside travel falls under the Insurance Distribution Directive, Directive (EU) 2016/97 of 20 January 2016, which covers businesses that sell insurance on an ancillary basis, travel agents and car rental companies among them, with a narrow exemption for ancillary intermediaries set out in Article 1(3). Rules on registration, information duties and complaints differ by member state, and by country outside the EU. Check what applies to you before you sell it, not after.
The rest of the list is commercially simple by comparison. That asymmetry is worth remembering when deciding where to start.
When to ask, and why timing does most of the work
The moment a client confirms a trip is the moment they start thinking about everything around it: getting from the airport, whether the trip is covered if someone falls ill, how they will stay in touch with home. An offer made then is answering a question they already have. The same offer made three weeks later, out of the blue, is a cold call.
There is a second good moment, shortly before departure, when the practical questions arrive on their own. If you already send a pre-departure message, that message is the natural place for the small items rather than a separate pitch.
ASTA's research points the same way from the client side: 30% of advisors say more than half their clients are using an advisor for the first time, and half of travellers say they are more likely to use one now than in the past (ASTA 2026 press kit). Someone new to using an agency does not yet know what you can handle. Saying it plainly at confirmation is information, not upselling.
Upselling without becoming a salesperson
Three rules keep this from damaging the relationship that produces the repeat booking.
Offer what the trip actually needs. A transfer for a late arrival, cover for a non-refundable booking, data for a client going somewhere their carrier charges a lot. Not a list of everything available.
Say what it costs and what it is for, once. If the answer is no, the answer is no, and it does not need revisiting at every touchpoint.
Do not sell what you cannot support. Every add-on is a possible support call. If the supplier behind it does not handle its own problems, the call comes to you, and you have bought a small commission with an unbounded amount of work. Ask who answers the traveller when something fails before you add a line.
That last one is also the reason to be careful about margin maths on tiny items. An add-on that earns a few units of currency and generates one support conversation per ten sales is not revenue, it is a hobby.
What to measure, and the honest limit of the numbers
Track two things per trip sold: attach rate, meaning the share of trips that include at least one add-on, and revenue per trip including fees. The first tells you whether the offer is being made at all, the second whether it is worth making. Both are more useful than a supplier's headline commission rate, which as ASTA's brief shows repeatedly is not the rate you receive.
And the usual caveat applies to every figure on this page. Most published commission data is American, some of it British, and the actual numbers vary by country, by supplier contract and by which host agency or consortium an agency sells through. Host Agency Reviews says outright that there is no average travel agent commission and that contracts are confidential. Use these ranges to decide what to look into, then check your own agreements.
Quick answers
What else can travel agents sell besides flights and hotels?
Travel insurance, planning and service fees, airport transfers, car hire, excursions and tickets, upgrades, lounge access and connectivity. Insurance carries the highest published rates, 20% to 37% and up to around 40% on top policies, while fees are the only line kept in full because no supplier takes a share of them.
How much do travel agencies make on travel insurance?
Published rates run from 20% to 37% depending on the insurer and the policy, and Host Agency Reviews puts the most comprehensive policies up towards 40%. It is also regulated distribution, so in the European Union the Insurance Distribution Directive applies and local registration and disclosure rules vary by country.
Does upselling annoy clients?
It does when the offer is generic or repeated. Made once, at the moment the trip is confirmed, about something the trip genuinely needs, it reads as service rather than selling, especially for the many clients who are using an agency for the first time and do not yet know what you handle.
Sources: ASTA, "The History, Economic Impact and Future of Non-Commissionable Fares (NCFs) in the Travel Industry", May 2026. ASTA 2026 Press Kit (citing Airlines Reporting Corporation, Phocuswright and Travel Weekly, "U.S. Travel Agency Landscape 2023", and ASTA research). Host Agency Reviews, "How Much Does a Travel Agent Make per Booking?", 23 May 2024, and "Travel Agent Commissions, Explained", last updated 23 March 2024. The Travel Franchise, "What commission does a travel agent make?", 4 April 2025. Onyx CenterSource, "Travel Agency Commission Rates and Settlement", 30 June 2026. Directive (EU) 2016/97 of 20 January 2016 on insurance distribution. Checked 27 September 2026.
Of the lines in that table, connectivity is the one that asks least of an agency. A traveller going abroad will buy mobile data from somebody, at the gate or from their own carrier at roaming prices, so the spend exists whether or not you are part of it. Sold as an eSIM there is nothing to stock, nothing to ship and nothing to collect on return, the price is the agency's to set, and the margin stays with the agency. If it is new to you, what an eSIM is explains it the way a client would ask. How it works for an agency is on our partner programme, and support answers the rest.