Founder, NAMA
31 years in travel — ran and exited a travel business before building NAMA. Writes about quoting, margins, supplier rates and the operating truth behind a travel agency; every article is drafted by AI inside NAMA and approved by him.
A 40-year European DMC says AI does the admin and humans keep the judgement. They are right, and a Mauritius hotel rate from my own OTA years proves it from the Indian side.
Narayan Mallapur · 3 November 2026 · 3 min read
Since 1 October 2026, every WhatsApp reply your agency sends has a price in India. Here is what Meta actually charges, what a middleman adds on top, and how NAMA tenants skip that second line entirely.
Narayan Mallapur · 3 November 2026 · 5 min read
When Google shows an AI summary, clicks on traditional results fall by nearly half. For a travel agency, the answer is not another acronym. It is being the source the answer names, and being fast when the enquiry lands.
Narayan Mallapur · 2 November 2026 · 6 min read
Code got cheap. The scarce part of software is service: knowing an agency's rates, people and approvals, and keeping it running as travel changes.
Narayan Mallapur · 1 November 2026 · 5 min read
IATA's 2026 Global Passenger Survey found 49% of travellers have used AI to plan a trip, rising to 72% in the Middle East and 57% in Asia-Pacific. When those travellers ask AI about a destination you sell, the answer is built from web pages. Here is how to make yours the page that gets quoted.
Narayan Mallapur · 31 October 2026 · 3 min read
Skift Research tested ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude on 21 destinations and found that nearly a third of strong-fit matches were never recommended. What that means for how your agency describes its trips.
Narayan Mallapur · 29 October 2026 · 4 min read
A rate you saw at 10 am can be gone by 6 pm. The only safe quote is a sourced rate with a clear validity window.
Narayan Mallapur · 27 October 2026 · 2 min read
Hotels price by the market a guest comes from. When inventory does not carry that, a client is booked at the wrong rate and you spend days proving it. A real Mauritius case, and how to avoid it.
Narayan Mallapur · 22 October 2026 · 2 min read
Most travel enquiries die between the first reply and the quote, not because the quote was wrong but because nobody followed up. Here is a five-touch sequence, a service-level rule your team can actually keep, and the messages to paste.
Narayan Mallapur · 20 October 2026 · 5 min read
An itinerary can be right on paper and still fail the client. The rule it was built on changed, and nobody could have known. Here is the habit that closes that gap.
Narayan Mallapur · 20 October 2026 · 3 min read
Booking.com asked more than 28,000 travellers what 2027 looks like. Three of its nine predictions land right on a travel agency's desk. Here is what to do with them.
Narayan Mallapur · 18 October 2026 · 3 min read
A quote starts with a supplier rate and ends with a number the customer accepts. Between the two, most agencies lose 3–8 points of margin without a single bad decision. Here is where it leaks, with a worked example.
Narayan Mallapur · 13 October 2026 · 5 min read
A family may share one booking but not one definition of a good trip. Real personalisation is an operations problem before it becomes a design feature.
Narayan Mallapur · 6 October 2026 · 4 min read
Small agencies lose business to slow replies and forgotten follow-ups, not to bad service. An AI agent layer that drafts and you approve closes that gap.
Narayan Mallapur · 4 October 2026 · 5 min read
The opportunity is moving beyond standard circuits. Agencies that can quote unfamiliar, experience-led trips quickly will have an edge.
Narayan Mallapur · 29 September 2026 · 3 min read
About half of an agency's back-office minutes are already automated. The manual minutes hide in four places: building quotes, filling in bookings, making vouchers, and moving money.
Narayan Mallapur · 29 September 2026 · 9 min read
AI has made itinerary writing fast. But speed without rate provenance creates a new risk: a polished quote built on numbers nobody can defend.
Narayan Mallapur · 19 September 2026 · 4 min read
Most travel software confuses delight with decoration. Ours is simpler: take the moment an agency owner dreads, and make it go right, with proof. Here is what we are building, what already shipped, and the one rule we will not break.
Narayan Mallapur · 18 September 2026 · 4 min read
A CRM remembers who asked. An operating system answers them. The difference decides whether your rates, your quote and your invoice are one record or three — and it is the question to settle before you buy either.
Narayan Mallapur · 13 September 2026 · 4 min read
Markup and margin are not the same number, and the difference is where agencies quietly lose money. A worked example with real figures, plus the rule for setting a target margin per destination.
Narayan Mallapur · 13 September 2026 · 3 min read
Not a listicle. Nine questions that separate software built for Indian agencies from software built for hotels and airlines — with the honest answer for NAMA on each.
Narayan Mallapur · 13 September 2026 · 3 min read
Excel and WhatsApp run most agencies fine — until they don't. Here is the exact point where they fail, and what changes when the rates, the leads and the invoices live in one place.
Narayan Mallapur · 13 September 2026 · 4 min read