Travel agency software: what a small agency needs, and what it gets sold
The real categories, from GDS access to mid office, CRM, quoting and itinerary builders. Published prices where the vendor publishes them, the ones that are quote-only, and an honest answer on free software.
A small agency needs four things from software: somewhere client facts live, a way to produce a quote and an itinerary that look professional, a way to collect money, and a way to know what you are owed. One or two tools usually cover all four. The common mistake is buying a platform built to run a forty-person operation, paying for it monthly, and using a tenth of it.
The market is confusing for a structural reason: the categories overlap, every vendor claims to be all of them, and the products aimed at larger agencies do not publish prices. What follows separates the categories, gives the prices vendors actually publish, and says plainly where no price exists.
The categories, and what each one is really for
| Category | What it does | Who genuinely needs it |
|---|---|---|
| Booking and GDS access | Searches and books air, hotel and car inventory, issues tickets | Agencies that ticket air themselves. If you book through suppliers, tour operators or a host, you may never touch a GDS |
| Mid office | Sits between booking and accounts: quality control on bookings, queues, document generation, data passed on | Agencies with enough daily bookings that manual re-entry becomes the job |
| Back office and accounting | Client and supplier ledgers, commission tracking and reconciliation, reporting, tax handling | Everyone, in some form. The question is whether it is a travel-specific system or your accountant's software plus discipline |
| CRM | Who the client is, what they travelled on, what was said, what happens next | Everyone. This is the one that pays for itself, because it is the only place your client knowledge survives staff changes |
| Quoting | Builds a priced proposal from components, with margins and options | Anyone selling tailor-made trips rather than packaged product |
| Itinerary builder | Turns a confirmed trip into something the client can read on a phone, with times, addresses and documents | Anyone whose trips have more than three moving parts |
| Payments | Takes deposits and balances, chases them, records them | Everyone who collects client money |
Two clarifications that save money. CRM and itinerary builder are not the same category, although several products sell both, and if you buy one expecting the other you will end up with two subscriptions. And mid office is not back office: mid office exists to stop humans retyping booking data, which is only worth paying for once that retyping is a measurable part of somebody's week.
What a small agency actually needs, versus what it is sold
The honest minimum for an agency of one to three people is: a CRM with your client history in it, a quoting and itinerary tool that produces documents you are not embarrassed by, a payment method with clear fees, and bookkeeping that tells you which commissions have not arrived. That is it.
What gets sold on top, and when it is premature:
- A GDS subscription when your bookings go through suppliers and operators anyway.
- A full mid office layer before there is enough volume for the retyping to cost more than the licence.
- An enterprise itinerary platform when a well-made document template and a clean mobile itinerary would do.
- A dedicated marketing automation suite before there is a list to send to.
- A dynamic packaging engine, which is really a tour operator tool, when you are selling other people's packages.
The one thing worth over-buying slightly is where client history lives, because that is the asset that makes a second booking cheaper than a first.
What travel software costs, where the vendor publishes a price
Prices below are from each vendor's own pricing page, read on 27 September 2026, in the currency the page showed.
| Product | Published price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| TravelJoy Starter | $19 a month | Capped at 12 trips a year. Unlimited clients, forms and invoices. No automations, no group bookings, no team members |
| TravelJoy Pro | $39 a month, or $32 a month billed annually | Unlimited trips, automations, group bookings, team members |
| Travefy Core | $39 a month billed annually | Itinerary and proposal builder, CRM with forms, invoicing, website builder, mobile apps |
| Travefy Premium | $59 a month billed annually | Core plus priority support, custom domain, premium onboarding |
| Travefy extra seats | $20 a month on Core, $39 on Premium | Agency features include commission reporting and shared templates |
| Tourwriter Starter | $99 per user a month, billed annually | One user, up to 25 itineraries a year, supplier and rates management, automatic pricing |
| Tourwriter Pro | $149 per user a month, billed annually | Two to five users, up to 50 itineraries per user, commissions, accounting exports |
| Tourwriter Premium | Price on application | Unlimited itineraries, multi-brand, business intelligence |
| Tourwriter setup | $1,199 one-off | Data migration, account setup and training |
Three things in that table matter more than the monthly figures.
The unit of pricing differs. Per user, per trip, per itinerary a year. A two-person agency doing tailor-made trips can pay less on a per-user tool than a solo advisor doing volume pays on a per-trip one, or the reverse. Work out your own count first, then compare.
One-off setup fees exist and are rarely in the headline. Tourwriter's $1,199 setup is published, which is to its credit; it is also roughly a year of a cheaper tool.
Payment processing rates can differ between plans of the same product. TravelJoy publishes 5% + 30c on card payments on Starter against 3.5% + 30c on Pro, and 3% against 1.5% on bank transfers. On any real volume of client money that gap is larger than the $20 difference in subscription. Always read the payment rates next to the plan price.
Is there free travel agency software
Partly, and it pays to be precise about what "free" means here.
- General CRMs have real free tiers. Zoho CRM is free for three users, with leads, deals, workflows and reports (zoho.com, read 27 September 2026). HubSpot's free CRM tools cover two users and 1,000 contacts with no expiry (hubspot.com, read 27 September 2026). Both will hold your client history perfectly well.
- Travel-specific tools generally give trials, not free tiers. TravelJoy offers a 7-day free trial, Travefy a 10-day one, both read 27 September 2026. That is the industry norm.
- A host agency usually includes tooling in its membership, which is one of the honest arguments for joining one.
- A spreadsheet plus a calendar is a legitimate starting point, and it is what most agencies that later pick good software were using first.
The catch with a free general CRM is what it does not know: it has no supplier records, no commission tracking, no itinerary output and no travel document handling. It will hold contacts and next actions. It will not tell you which commission is late. Plenty of agencies run the free CRM and do the commission side in their accounts package, and that is a reasonable trade for a while.
The prices nobody publishes, and how to read that
Checked on 27 September 2026:
- Sabre. Its own agency workspace page carries no prices and asks you to talk to sales. Amadeus and Travelport work the same way. GDS cost depends on negotiated terms, volume and segment economics, which is exactly why it is not on a web page.
- Trams Back Office and ClientBase, the long-established mid and back office pair now sold by TRES Technologies, list no price and direct you to sales or a demo.
- Most agency-wide platforms aimed at multi-branch operations are quote-only for the same reason.
Two practical consequences. Comparison sites and software directories will show numbers for these products; those numbers did not come from the vendor's price list, so treat them as hearsay and ask the vendor. And when a price is quote-only, the quote depends on what the vendor knows about your volume, so go in with your real booking numbers rather than aspirational ones.
How to choose without spending three months on it
- Start from the job that currently hurts. Losing track of commissions, retyping the same trip into three places, quotes that take an evening. Buy for that, not for the feature list.
- Check the exit before the entry. Can you export clients, trips and notes as usable files, and who owns the data? A tool you cannot leave is a tool that can raise its price.
- Test one whole real booking during the trial, from enquiry to final document, rather than clicking around. Trials are 7 to 10 days, so book the time in advance.
- Ask specifically about groups if you sell them. Group handling is often a higher plan, as TravelJoy's own pricing shows, or absent entirely.
- Count the subscription you will cancel. A new tool that replaces nothing is a new cost, not a change.
- Ask what happens to your data when a client asks to be deleted. If you are in the EU or the UK, that request will come eventually and the answer needs to be a feature, not an email to support.
Sources
TravelJoy pricing page, plan prices, trip caps and payment processing rates (read 27 September 2026). Travefy pricing page, Core, Premium, Agency seat pricing and trial length (read 27 September 2026). Tourwriter software pricing plans page, plan prices, itinerary limits and the one-off setup cost (read 27 September 2026). Zoho CRM pricing page, free edition for three users (read 27 September 2026). HubSpot CRM product page, free tools for two users and 1,000 contacts (read 27 September 2026). Sabre Mosaic agency workspace page, no published prices (read 27 September 2026). TRES Technologies, Trams Back Office page, no published prices (read 27 September 2026).
One thing that does not need a system
Not every service an agency adds requires a new platform or a new supplier integration. Some can be sold at the moment the trip is confirmed and delivered with the travel documents, with nothing held in stock. Mobile data for the destination is the plainest example, since the client pays for it somewhere regardless.
If that is the kind of addition you are looking for, it is what our partner programme covers. For the wider cost picture, there is our guide to what it costs to run a travel agency.
Quick answers
What software do travel agents actually need?
A place where client history lives, a quoting and itinerary tool, a way to collect money with fees you understand, and bookkeeping that shows unpaid commission. GDS access matters only if you ticket air yourself. Mid office layers matter only once manual re-entry is costing more than a licence.
Is there a free travel agency CRM?
There are real free tiers in general CRMs: Zoho CRM free for three users, HubSpot free for two users and 1,000 contacts, both read on 27 September 2026. Travel-specific tools give trials rather than free tiers, typically 7 to 10 days. A free general CRM will hold clients and tasks, but it will not track commissions or produce travel documents.
Why can I not find prices for a GDS or a back office system?
Because those vendors price per agency. Sabre's own page and the Trams Back Office page publish no figures and route to sales, checked 27 September 2026. Numbers you find on comparison sites for these products did not come from the vendor, so verify them before budgeting.