Selling through Türkiye's domestic travel sites: joining, contracts and daily work

Domestic travel sites are Turkish-based booking sites and agencies that sell to guests inside Türkiye, often with installments, packages and their own campaigns. A hotel joins by applying with its Ministry certificate number, agreeing terms such as allotment or free sale and who collects payment, then keeping rates, allotments and campaigns current. This guide covers domestic online travel agencies in Türkiye from application to weekly routine.

For example, a guest in Ankara books a week in Antalya on a Turkish travel site, pays in installments and arrives with a transfer included. The hotel sees a reservation, a commission and a settlement date that matches neither its own website nor the global booking sites. After reading this article you will be able to apply to a domestic site with the right documents, read the four contract clauses that decide what you keep, and run a weekly check that keeps the channel honest. The basics of working with booking sites apply here too; this article covers what is different about the domestic ones.

How do Türkiye's domestic travel sites differ from global booking sites?#

They sell mainly to guests who live in Türkiye, and they compete on how the guest pays and what the stay includes, not only on the room rate.

The guest is usually paying in Turkish lira with a domestic card, and the installment option is a product feature of the site. Someone finances that deferral, so ask who. The product is often a package: room plus transfer, plus extras, sold as one price. The hotel may be asked to price an element it does not control, such as a transfer it does not operate.

Campaigns run on the site's calendar, not the hotel's: early booking, last minute, card-specific offers. Participation is usually a contract term, so read it before the first campaign lands. Rooms are held in one of two ways. Allotment means a block of rooms is set aside for the site; free sale means the site sells from the hotel's live availability. These are industry practice, not legal definitions, and each contract defines its own version.

Payment is either hotel collect, where the guest pays the property, or site collect, where the site takes the money and settles later. This changes cash flow, refund handling and who issues which document. The relationship is usually a named account manager and a rate sheet loaded by hand at the site's end, rather than a self-service global extranet.

Treat all of this as a pattern to check, not a rule. Each site publishes its own partner terms, and those terms are the ones that bind.

Can a travel site list a hotel that has no certificate number?#

No. Since 26 July 2024, agencies must check the certificate number in the Ministry database, show it in their sales and marketing, and may not market or sell accommodation without a certificate.

The rule comes from the amendment to the Travel Agencies Regulation published in the Resmî Gazete on 26 July 2024 (No. 32613) (opens in a new tab). It sets three duties: verify the certificate number through the Ministry of Culture and Tourism database, show it, and refuse uncertified facilities. In practice the certificate number is the first document in any application, before photos, rates or room types.

After you go live, look at your own page the way a guest would. The certificate number should be visible there. If it is missing, ask the site in writing. A site that offers to list you without a certificate is telling you how it handles every other rule as well. Keep the record current: a change of company title, address or facility details on the certificate should reach every channel that shows it. This article describes the duty, not the sanction, so confirm the current scope, deadlines and penalties with your legal adviser. The wider rules on certificate numbers on booking channels apply to every channel, not only domestic ones.

What to have ready before you apply#

What does hotel registration on a domestic travel site involve?#

Usually an online application that the site reviews, followed by an extranet account and a go-live that only happens once prices and allotments are entered.

Otelz is named here only because its own sign-up page describes the steps in order. Its sign-up FAQ, read on 4 November 2026 (opens in a new tab), lists: general details, facility details, rooms and room amenities, photos, then the credit cards and installment options accepted, company invoice details, cancellation terms and channel manager details if one is used. The application ends with the Site Membership and Usage Agreement, a preview and a submission. Otelz then reviews it.

On approval, Otelz sends a link to the email address given so the property can create its Extranet password. That email address is a decision, not a detail: it should be a company mailbox that survives staff changes, not one person's personal address.

Approval is not the same as being on sale. The property becomes visible on Otelz.com and can take bookings after it enters prices and allotments. The same FAQ states that Otelz charges no usage or membership fee for the Extranet, only an agency commission on bookings made through Otelz.com, and that the property collects payment from the guest unless it chooses to let Otelz collect online on its behalf. Read each site's own page and record the date you read it.

Other sites publish their own partner or hotel registration pages. The order differs, but the inputs are similar: identity, rooms, photos, payment options, invoice details, cancellation rules. Three things commonly slow an application: photos that do not match the room types, invoice details that differ from the contract, and cancellation terms written as prose instead of rules. Preparing these properly is the same work as going live on any booking site.

Which contract terms decide what the hotel keeps?#

Four clauses decide most of it: how rooms are held, who collects the money, who carries a cancellation, and who funds a campaign.

Room holding is allotment or free sale, and if allotment, the release period. A block that is never released is inventory you cannot sell, and it is invisible in the extranet unless someone checks. Confirmation is instant or on request; on request needs a person watching the queue, because a slow answer loses the booking to the next site.

Payment is hotel collect or site collect. Site collect moves the settlement date and the refund risk to the site but ties up your cash; hotel collect leaves collection and chargebacks with you. Campaigns are optional or committed, and who funds the discount matters: a campaign the hotel funds is a rate cut with a marketing label, while one the site funds is marketing.

Invoice flow decides who issues which document to whom, and the fiscal document has to match who sold what to whom, so take this to your accountant before the first booking. Exit terms matter too: notice period, and what happens to bookings already confirmed when you leave. An exit clause that strands future bookings is worse than a higher commission.

The honest way to compare this channel against others is distribution cost per booking: what the hotel keeps after every clause above has done its work.

How do these sites connect to the hotel's system?#

In one of three ways: the site's own extranet where a person types rates and allotments, a channel manager that pushes them automatically, or a rate sheet the site loads by hand at its end.

A channel manager is software that holds one copy of rates and availability and pushes it to each connected channel, then pulls the reservations back. It only helps where a connection actually exists, so ask which sites are connected today and what the mapping covers: room types, rate plans, restrictions and allotments. A connection that carries rates but not restrictions still leaves work by hand.

Extranet only is workable for one or two sites. Every change is typed twice, and the risk is a rate that is already stale when the guest looks. Contract loading is the third mode: some sites load a contracted rate sheet and a room block at their end, and changes then go through the account manager, so lead times matter more than keystrokes.

Decide the source of truth per room type. If the extranet holds an allotment and the channel manager also pushes availability, the two can disagree, and the guest sees whichever wins. Test after every change: make a test booking, confirm it lands in the hotel system, cancel it, and confirm the room comes back.

How do campaigns and installment offers sit next to the hotel's own prices?#

A campaign on a travel site is a discount advertisement, and since 1 August 2026 the price it must be measured against is the one in the channel where the discount runs.

Article 14 of the Commercial Advertising and Unfair Commercial Practices Regulation was amended in the Resmî Gazete of 1 July 2026 (No. 33297) and took effect on 1 August 2026, per the consolidated text on the Mevzuat Bilgi Sistemi (opens in a new tab). An advertisement announcing a discount must state the pre-discount price and the start and end dates of the sale. For services, the pre-discount price is the price that applied just before the discounted price. Where a service is sold through several channels, that price comes only from the channel where the discount is offered.

The practical consequence: your rate on that site is the reference, not your own website rate. Keep a dated record of each rate change per channel so you can show what applied just before.

Installments are a cost somewhere. Ask who carries it and when the hotel is settled, because an installment offer the hotel pays for is a rate cut in another form. Offers also stack: a site campaign, a card campaign and a hotel discount can land on the same booking, so decide the order and who funds each one before the campaign starts. Confirm with your adviser how the advertising rules apply to your own pages and to prices quoted in foreign currency, and read the companion guide on direct booking payments and installments for the guest-facing side.

What does a weekly routine for domestic channels look like?#

One fixed hour a week, in the same order, catches most of what goes wrong on these channels.

Start with rates and restrictions for the next 90 days on each site, checked on the guest-facing page, not only in the extranet. Then allotment and pickup: how many rooms the block has taken, how many are still held, and when the release period ends. Follow with the campaign calendar: what is running this week, who funds it, and what price the guest actually sees.

Content comes next: photos, room names, board types and cancellation text, updated for anything that changed in the hotel this month. Then reservations hygiene: bookings that arrived but are not in the hotel system, cancellations not yet processed, no-shows not closed. Money comes last: the settlement report against the invoice, with unmatched items listed for the accountant rather than argued over later.

Once a month, write one page per site: bookings, room nights, cancellations, campaign cost and what the hotel kept. Keep the page and compare it next month.

Where to start#

Start with the certificate number and one site, not five. Apply with complete details, read the four clauses that decide what you keep, and put the weekly check in a calendar before the first booking arrives. A second site is easier once the first one is clean, because the folder, the terms and the routine already exist.