If you sell packages into Türkiye and Egypt, you’re trading in volatility: late schedule changes, air cancellations, re-protection roulette, and hotel no-shows when inbound legs slip. The winners aren’t luckier—they’re more mechanical. This is the operating model I’ve seen turn post-pandemic travel chaos into predictable refunds and chargeback automation that actually closes cases.
What was breaking (and why it cost real money)
- Refund latency. Cross-border card reversals plus hotel/airline approvals created week-long limbos. Customers opened disputes before ops could act.
- All-or-nothing mindset. One cancelled flight froze the entire booking; the finance team treated a five-component itinerary like a single SKU.
- Evidence scavenger hunts. When chargebacks hit, agents stitched together PNRs, fare rules, emails, and screenshots—usually after deadlines.
- Supplier stalemates. Hotels wanted proof of cancellation cause; airlines hid behind fare rules; the DMC sat in the middle guessing.
None of this is inevitable. Structure money around events, not emails.
North star in one line
Break each package into event-driven sub-ledgers (air, hotel, transfer, extras). When an event flips (cancelled, reprotected, used), money moves by rule—refund today, evidence attached, value date promised.
The ledger: where chaos goes to get organized
Think of the booking as a container with child components:
- Air (PNR + coupons/segments)
- Hotel (rate plan + stay dates)
- Transfers / excursions / insurance
Each child has:
- Trigger events (TK change, HX/UN cancellation, check-in/out, show/no-show, used/refunded).
- Financial state: reserved → captured → refundable bucket → consumed.
- Supplier rules: fare rules/penalties, hotel cancellation windows, DMC SLAs.
When an event lands (e.g., airline cancels TK-XYZ), the ledger applies deterministic money rules:
- Move the air portion to the refundable bucket immediately.
- Keep hotel/transfer intact unless a dependency rule says otherwise (e.g., “no inbound air by day 1 → auto-void first night penalty, refund remainder”).
- If the customer accepts reprotection (new flight), rebind the air value to the new coupon; refund the fare difference or collect a top-up automatically.
No agent math. The booking tells finance what to do.
Split capture at checkout (your refund superpower)
Stop capturing the whole cart as one opaque charge. Capture per component:
- Air capture (authorisation → capture) sits against the air sub-ledger.
- Hotel capture against hotel.
- Transfers/extras separately.
When air breaks, you refund air only—same method, same descriptor, no hotel collateral damage. Customers see clarity; chargeback risk falls.
Rails and value dates customers can believe
- EU/UK shoppers: use domestic acquiring for cards plus SEPA Instant / Faster Payments for account-to-account (A2A) checkout.
- Refunds: default to original method. For A2A, commit to “approved today → credited next business day” during banking hours; for cards, show scheme expectations and push refund advice events so issuers update online banking promptly.
- TRY/EGP supplier payouts: pay DMCs/hotels locally via domestic rails; hold a refund reserve so claw-backs don’t starve operations.
Agents need a date they can say out loud; give them a calculator that respects cut-offs and holidays in both time zones.
Airline logic that stops disputes before they start
Wire fare rules and coupon states into your money engine:
- Auto-qualify involuntary refunds on UN/UC/HX statuses with zero customer friction; attach SSR/OSIs and carrier notices to the evidence file.
- Reprotection first, refund second: offer new flight options with explicit timer (e.g., 12–24h). If the customer declines or timer expires, push the refund by rule.
- EMD handling (bags, seats): refund alongside base fare when involuntarily cancelled; where policy requires, issue credit shell only with explicit consent (and show its expiry).
If you still argue fare rules over email, you’ll lose to the chargeback clock.
Hotels and DMCs: stop the email stalemates
- Pre-agree rules in the DMC/hotel contract: “If inbound flight cancelled by carrier T-24/T-0, waive first-night penalty; otherwise apply rate plan rule.”
- Evidence bundle auto-attached: airline cancel notice + PNR history + timeline.
- Day-count tails: if a claim is under review, park funds in a 2–5 day tail; release automatically if supplier doesn’t respond inside SLA.
Suppliers cooperate when the rules are visible and money follows the clock.
Communication that defuses chargebacks
- Plain-language statuses in the customer portal: “Your outbound flight was cancelled by the airline at 09:43. We’ll refund €326.40 to your Visa ••9123. Expected credit: tomorrow by 18:00 local.”
- One-click choices: “Accept reprotection” vs “Full refund for flights; keep hotel” vs “Cancel all components.”
- Proactive outreach on TK changes and downgrades with a countdown—preemption beats dispute every time.
Confused customers dispute. Informed customers choose.
Chargebacks on autopilot: evidence packs that build themselves
When a dispute still lands, your system assembles a compelling evidence pack instantly:
- PNR history (coupon statuses, TK change timestamps).
- Fare rules and penalty extracts (ATPCO/agency copy).
- Hotel/DMC confirmations and check-in/out logs.
- Customer communications, reprotection offers, and acceptance/decline timestamps.
- Refund advice ID and processor confirmation with value date.
Feed collaboration channels (where available) to short-circuit formal chargebacks; otherwise file within the window with zero agent assembly.
Risk controls that save real money (and reputation)
- Name/account lock for supplier payouts; changes require out-of-band confirmation and a cooling-off period.
- Velocity caps for manual refunds per agent per hour; large batches require dual control.
- Anomaly alerts: sudden surge of cancellations from one carrier/route triggers a playbook, not panic; pre-emptively notify affected bookings and freeze marketing on those dates.
- Sanctions/PEP checks on counterparties (DMCs, consolidators) at onboarding and periodically.
Quiet controls prevent loud headlines.
Treasury and FX: keep spreads out of the customer experience
- Local pools: EUR/GBP for collections/refunds; TRY/EGP for supplier payouts.
- Sweeps: convert TRY/EGP to EUR on threshold & calendar rules; benchmark achieved rates vs a neutral source and report weekly.
- Pre-funded refund buckets in EUR/GBP so customer credits never depend on supplier claw-backs clearing first.
If customers can feel your FX timing, the design is wrong.
What changed after three cycles (directional, but repeatable)
- Refund SLA compliance >95% for A2A and within scheme windows for cards.
- Chargeback rate down 40–60% as proactive comms and clean split-captures made disputes unnecessary.
- Win/deflect rate up: collaboration tools + instant evidence packs closed many cases before they turned formal.
- Supplier friction fell: contract rules + auto-attached evidence ended “please send proof” loops.
- Auto-reconciliation exceeded 95% once virtual references and component-level captures went live.
Different mixes, same shape of results.
Build order that fits a quarter (and actually ships)
Weeks 1–3
- Implement the component ledger (air/hotel/transfers) with event hooks (GDS queue, NDC/agency API, hotel PMS/DMC feed).
- Turn on split capture at checkout; map refunds per component.
Weeks 4–6
- Wire A2A rails (SEPA Instant/FPS) for collections + refunds; publish a value-date calculator for agents.
- Contract supplier rules for cancellation/reprotection and day-count tails; reflect them in the ledger.
Weeks 7–9
- Automate evidence packs for disputes; integrate collaboration channels where available.
- Stand up refund buckets and dual-control for large batches; add anomaly alerts for route-level disruptions.
Weeks 10–12
- Expose self-service customer choices (reprotect vs partial/full refund).
- Add TRY/EGP payout pipelines with local rails; implement threshold-based FX sweeps and weekly benchmark reporting.
Ship the events and the ledger first; everything else snaps on cleanly.
Red flags worth a polite “no”
- Consolidators that refuse to surface fare rules or suppress coupon states—your dispute risk will be unmanageable.
- Hotels that won’t codify inbound-cancellation waivers—expect endless manual exceptions.
- One-charge checkout with no split capture—you’ll spend your life refunding the wrong amounts.
- Promising “instant refunds” without pre-funded buckets—tickets will remind you quickly.
Say no early; it’s cheaper than apologizing later.