How to Choose a Corporate Travel Agency in Türkiye: 10 Questions to Ask

If your company has an office in Türkiye, someone will eventually ask you to approve a local corporate travel agency. Head office may use a global travel management company, but the Turkish team books domestic flights, pays in lira and needs invoices that fit Turkish accounting. Below are ten questions to put to every agency in the same words, with the local rules behind them.

Map your own travel first

Pull the last 12 months of data: travellers, flights, the split between domestic and international, the five busiest routes and hotel nights. Without it each agency guesses your volume and the proposals cannot be compared. If the Turkish entity has no written travel policy, write one or confirm that the group policy applies. Our corporate travel policy guide covers what goes into it.

Licence and ticketing: TÜRSAB and IATA

1. What is your TÜRSAB licence number and group? Under Law No. 1618 every Turkish agency needs a Ministry of Culture and Tourism licence and must belong to TÜRSAB, the Association of Turkish Travel Agencies. The law sorts agencies into three groups. Group A may provide every travel agency service. Group B sells international transport tickets and the tours of Group A agencies. Group C runs domestic tours for Turkish citizens only. An agency that handles flights, hotels, transfers and group trips abroad for you should be Group A.

Check it yourself in TÜRSAB's member agency search, which is in Turkish. Type the trade name and the record shows the TÜRSAB number, group, address and phone.

2. Do you issue tickets yourselves? An IATA-accredited agency holds one sales agreement covering many airlines, issues tickets itself and settles through IATA's Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP). An agency without accreditation usually has tickets issued by another agency. That adds a link to every change and refund.

How agencies charge

3. How do you charge, and does the fee appear as a separate line? Three models are common. A transaction fee is a fixed charge per ticket, hotel booking or change. A management fee is a monthly amount regardless of volume. In the third the fee is built into the price, which makes it impossible to compare. Ask each agency to price the same sample month: 40 flights, 25 hotel nights, 6 changes.

Invoicing, payment and e-invoices in Türkiye

4. How and how often do you invoice? In Türkiye company invoices are commonly issued electronically, as an e-Fatura or an e-Arşiv Fatura, under rules set by the Revenue Administration. Ask whether you get one invoice per trip or a single monthly invoice, whether it lands directly in your accounting software, and whether it carries the traveller's name and your cost centre. If head office needs to recharge costs to other entities, ask which currency the invoice is in and how the exchange rate is set.

5. Which payment methods do you accept? Open account with credit terms, a company card or single-use virtual cards. Credit terms usually come with a contract, so settle the conditions early.

Applying your travel policy

6. What happens when a booking request breaks the policy? A good answer is specific: the agency flags it, waits for the named approver before ticketing and shows the case in the monthly report. Give a real example and ask them to walk you through it.

7. Can you load our own airline and hotel agreements? A global airline or hotel deal is worth nothing locally if the Turkish agency cannot apply it in its booking system. Our corporate hotel agreement guide explains how these deals are built.

Support outside office hours

8. At 11pm a colleague's flight from Frankfurt is cancelled. Who do they call? You want a name or a duty line, not a call centre that has never seen your file, and an agency that can tell you where your travellers are during a crisis. The international reference for travel risk management is ISO 31030. If your group has a travel risk policy, ask the agency to confirm in writing how it will follow it.

For visa routes, ask whether the agency handles visa appointments and document checks.

Reporting and personal data

9. Which breakdowns does the monthly report show? At a minimum: department, traveller, route, fare class and out-of-policy bookings. Ask for a sample. If it cannot show how early tickets were bought or what was lost on non-refundable fares, it will not help you cut spend. Our article on refundable and promotional fares explains why fare class matters.

10. How do you store passport and ID data, and will you sign a data processing agreement? Türkiye's data protection law, Law No. 6698 (often called KVKK), treats the agency as a data processor acting on your behalf. Article 12 makes your company jointly responsible with the agency for keeping that data secure. The contract should say where the data is stored, who sees it and what happens to it at the end.

What to send when you ask for a proposal

Send every agency the same brief:

• Annual travellers and flights, with the domestic and international split
• Main routes and preferred airlines
• Annual hotel nights by city
• Existing airline and hotel agreements
• Your travel policy or its main rules
• Invoicing set-up: single invoice, cost centres, payment terms
• Who approves trips and how approvals are recorded

Frequently asked questions

Is a corporate travel agency a different kind of licence?

No. Turkish law has one agency licence with three groups. "Corporate" describes how the agency works: policy control, single invoicing, monthly reports and out-of-hours support.

Does an agency sell tickets at a higher price than the airline?

The fare is set by the airline. Any difference comes from the agency's service fee, and its size depends on the model you agree.

Should we use more than one agency?

One channel makes reporting and policy control easier. Companies with two agencies usually give one business trips and the other groups and events.

What happens to existing tickets if we switch agency?

Changes and refunds on an issued ticket usually go through the agency that issued it. Plan to keep the old agency for open tickets during the handover.

Can a small office work with a corporate agency?

Yes. Even a few dozen flights a year benefit from one invoice and one contact. With low volume, ask for a transaction fee rather than a management fee.

Put the same ten questions to us too. Our answers and working model are on the corporate travel solutions page.