The per-booking FX spread you quoted away

Most agencies sell in the currency the customer understands. You quote a package, the customer agrees, and they pay you in their own currency. But the hotel, the carrier or the ground handler at the other end wants paying in the destination currency, and that payment usually happens weeks after the sale was agreed. Between the quote and the supplier payment sits a currency conversion, and every conversion carries a spread, typically a margin above the mid-market rate, sometimes several percent all-in once cards or banks are involved.

The sting is not simply that there is an FX cost. It is that you committed to the sale price long before the conversion happened. You quoted a margin based on an exchange rate you assumed, and you cannot go back to the customer and adjust it once the real conversion crystallises. If the rate moves against you, or the spread is wider than you allowed for, the difference comes straight out of the margin you already promised away. This guide is about that pre-quoted-margin trap, not about generic multi-currency holding.

The price is locked long before you pay

The defining feature of travel pricing is the gap in time. A customer books today in their own currency at a price you publish today. The supplier in the destination is paid in their currency, often weeks later, when the prepayment or balance falls due. Your margin on the booking is the difference between what the customer paid and what the supplier costs you, but those two figures are denominated in different currencies and settled at different moments.

That means your margin is only as reliable as the exchange rate you assumed when you quoted. If you built the price on a rate that no longer holds when you actually convert, your real margin is whatever is left after the true conversion, not the figure on your quote. Unlike a wholesaler who can re-price, you have already sold. The customer's price is fixed, so any FX surprise lands entirely on you.

Where the spread hides

The conversion cost is rarely a single visible line. When you pay a destination supplier by card or by ordinary bank transfer, the rate applied is typically a margin above the mid-market rate, and there may be transfer or card fees layered on top. All-in, that can run to several percent of the payment, which on a low-margin package is a meaningful slice of profit. Because it is bundled into the rate rather than itemised, it is easy to underestimate when you set your selling price.

Treat any specific figure as illustrative and check current terms, because rates and fees vary by route and provider. The point is structural: a pre-quoted margin assumes a clean conversion, but the actual conversion is rarely clean. Every booking where you collect in one currency and pay in another carries this hidden erosion, and across a season of bookings it compounds into a number worth controlling.

Reclaiming control of the conversion

You cannot change the customer's price after the sale, but you can change how and when you convert. If you can hold the customer-currency receipts as they are, rather than converting everything immediately, you decouple the moment of sale from the moment of conversion. You then convert to the supplier currency when it suits the payment schedule and the rate, instead of being forced into a spot conversion the instant a supplier invoice arrives.

Holding balances in the major currencies you trade in also lets you pay some suppliers directly from a matching balance, avoiding a conversion altogether on those payments. Where you do convert, doing it deliberately, at a controlled rate on your own timeline, gives you the best chance of protecting the margin you quoted. The aim is not to promise a particular rate or saving, which no one can, but to stop the conversion happening on the worst possible terms by default.

How Altery fits

This problem is about separating the moment you sell from the moment you convert. With a multi-currency account you can hold customer-currency receipts and supplier-currency funds side by side, paying many destination outflows directly from a matching balance without a forced conversion. Where conversion is needed, currency conversion at controlled rates on your own timeline lets you choose when to move money between currencies rather than accepting a spot rate at the moment a supplier invoices.

Because you can hold balances in USD, EUR and GBP, you can time conversions against the margin you pre-quoted, converting when the rate works for you rather than reacting to each payment deadline. Real-time balances show your position in each currency so you can decide where to pay directly and where to convert. The wider travel toolkit lives at our travel business account. Altery is not a bank, and this is general information, not advice; no provider can promise a particular exchange rate or saving, so treat this as help timing and controlling conversions, not as a guarantee on FX cost.

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