Inbound is quoted differently from domestic, and the differences are not cosmetic. An operator selling India to a European agency is doing arithmetic that most travel software has never been asked to do — and because the shape looks familiar, nobody notices until a season's quotations have gone out slightly wrong.
The lead time changes what a rate means
A domestic enquiry is for next month. An inbound enquiry is for next winter, from an agency building a brochure. You are being asked to commit a price eight to fourteen months out, against hotel rates that do not exist yet.
That means your rate card needs two kinds of row: a contracted rate you can stand behind, and a projected one you are quoting at risk. Software that treats both as simply "the rate" gives you no way to see how much of a season's quoting is exposed — and the answer to that question is what decides whether you sleep in March.
Foreign exchange is not a conversion, it is a position
You quote in euros or dollars and pay in rupees, months apart. The gap is a real commercial exposure, and the common software answer — one conversion rate in a settings box — is worse than no answer, because it looks like it has been handled.
What actually helps: the rate you quoted at, stored on the quotation, so that when the booking lands you can see what moved. See quoting in the supplier's currency.
It is an Indian supply, whatever the currency says
Worth stating because operators get this wrong in both directions: a foreign tourist touring India is a service performed in India, so the place of supply is India and GST applies. Billing in foreign exchange does not make it an export. GST and TCS on a tour package goes through it, and it carries a date at the top because these rules have moved twice recently.
The things a domestic quotation never has to carry
- Per-person costs that are not hotel or vehicle. Monument fees, camera charges, guide day rates in three languages, and a national park entry that is priced differently for a foreign passport. These are the lines most often estimated and most often wrong.
- Free-of-cost positions. A tour leader or escort travelling with the group, whose room and seat are your cost and nobody's revenue, and whose ratio changes with group size.
- Arrival and departure days that are not nights. A 22:00 arrival transfer with a day room is a cost with no hotel night attached to it, and quoting by nights loses it every time.
- Single supplements on a series. On a fixed-departure group the supplement is not a rounding item, it is a significant part of the margin.
One itinerary, many departures
Inbound sells the same fourteen days repeatedly across a season. What matters is what a saved itinerary stores. If it stores prices, every departure is a copy that has to be re-checked and the season becomes forty near-identical documents drifting apart. If it stores the shape and prices it against the date, one itinerary serves the whole season and a rate correction reaches all of it.
This is the same distinction as costed versus presentation itinerary builders, and on a fixed-departure programme it is the difference between a season you can manage and one you cannot.
Your buyer is a reseller
The agency quoting you will add margin and send it on under their own brand. Everything in choosing software as a DMC applies: an unambiguous net, a re-brandable document, and terms that survive being rebuilt on the other side.
The short version
Ask for a quotation eight months out, for a group of twelve with one escort and two singles, priced in euros, with monument fees and a day room on arrival. Any platform can build a seven-night family trip for next month. That is not what your business does.
Stop rebuilding the same quotation.
One rate card, one branded document, sent in minutes instead of an afternoon.
See what it does
