by Mia Taylor
Last updated: 7:50 PM ET, Mon October 26, 2026
Tern, an operating system used by more than 15,000 independent travel advisors and the agencies that support them, has just launched new hotel booking capabilities within its platform designed to save advisors time and provide them with guaranteed commissions.
“What normally was 30 minutes to an hour of work is now just 30 seconds,” David Shull, CEO of Tern, told TravelPulse during an interview about the platform’s newest features.
As part of the new offering, advisors can find and book hotels in the same Tern platform where they already manage clients’ trips. The launch of the new features brings client management, hotel booking, commission management and the client experience together in one platform.
“We are the first platform to offer this,” Shull said of the hotel booking capabilities and commission features added to Tern’s platform.
Less time between planning a trip and booking it
Historically, travel advisors booking hotels would have to move back and forth between the software they use to run their business and multiple hotel booking sites. As part of that process, advisors typically research hotels, compare rates and availability, send options to their client, and then return to book the hotel, while also checking that the rates are still available, Shull explained.
That process can take more than 30 minutes per hotel booking, which means many advisors don't even bother, leaving money on the table.
"By integrating hotels into the workflow layer, we believe we can help advisors sell more than they ever have before," Vivian Hou, Tern's head of supplier growth, said. "It takes a sale that wasn't worth the time and makes it a few clicks. That means more sales for the entire industry."
Using the new Tern features, advisors can view real-time hotel rates and availability, send a hotel option, and complete the booking where they already work.
Host agencies, meanwhile, can offer their advisors hotel booking within Tern without building a separate platform or adding another booking tool to their tech stack.
Guaranteed commissions
Another important part of Tern’s new hotel booking capabilities is that commissions on bookings made using the platform are now guaranteed. Payments are made directly to the advisor's agency or host agency within seven days after a client checks out. That's a big deal considering the American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA) maintains a "hotel watch list" for hotels that consistently do not pay commissions to travel advisors as required.
Since launching its ‘Report a Hotel Commission Tool’, ASTA
has recovered nearly $60,000 in unpaid commissions for its advisor
members. These recoveries represent income advisors earned but struggled
for months to collect, often with no response.
Tern's new commission feature should help alleviate some of these challenges. When bookings are made in Tern, commissions are automatically reconciled, so agencies and hosts don't have to wait for reconciliation statements from suppliers. Translation: advisors can spend less time chasing payments, while hosts spend less time reconciling them.
“We want advisors to be able to make more money from hotels. And we want to do that in a way that pushes the industry forward,” Shull told TravelPulse.
As of the launch of Tern’s booking feature, the platform includes 300,000 hotels. Shull expects that figure to grow to at least one million properties.
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