How fast should a DMC answer an agent's request? Cutting quote turnaround from days to hours
Acknowledge an agent's request within the hour and send a priced proposal the same working day. Most delay sits in rates, costing and copy, not in planning.
Bharat · Co-founder, Totem
6 min read
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In short
- Acknowledge every agent request within the hour, and send a first priced proposal within one working day. Same day wins more often.
- The agent is usually asking several DMCs at once, so the first credible, well-priced answer sets the benchmark the others are judged against.
- Most of the time on a quote goes on finding current rates, rebuilding the costing and rewriting day copy, not on designing the trip.
- Fix those three with a clean rate library, a reusable costing template and a description library, and turnaround drops from days to hours.
- Speed only helps if the price holds. A fast quote you have to revise costs more trust than a slower one that is right.
Ask any agent how they choose between DMCs and you will hear about relationships, local knowledge and price. Watch what they actually do and another factor shows up: who came back first with something they could forward. When an agent sends the same brief to three or four DMCs, the first solid proposal becomes the reference point, and every later one is read against it.
How fast should a DMC respond to an agent's request?
Acknowledge the request within an hour, confirm anything ambiguous in the brief the same day, and send a first priced proposal within one working day. For a simple FIT request, same-day is achievable and is increasingly what agents expect. Complex group or MICE requests can take longer, but the agent should know exactly when the proposal is coming.
| Request | Acknowledge | First priced proposal | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| FIT, standard route | Within 1 hour | Same working day | The agent is quoting their client today |
| FIT, bespoke or peak season | Within 1 hour | Within 1 working day | Availability checks with hotels |
| Small group (10 to 30 pax) | Within 1 hour | 1 to 2 working days | Group rates and allotments to confirm |
| MICE or incentive | Same day, with questions | 2 to 5 working days | Venues, programme design, site options |
Where do the hours actually go?
Time a quote from brief to sent PDF and the planning itself is rarely the slow part. An experienced consultant can sketch the right route for a 9-night trip in minutes. The hours go on everything around it.
| Step | Typical time | What slows it down |
|---|---|---|
| Read the brief and plan the route | 20 to 40 min | Unclear dates, pax or budget |
| Find current rates | 1 to 3 hours | Rates spread across contract PDFs, emails and old spreadsheets |
| Check availability | 30 min to a day | Waiting on hotels to reply |
| Build the costing | 1 to 2 hours | Rebuilding the sheet, currency conversion, per-pax splits, margin |
| Write the day-by-day copy | 1 to 2 hours | Rewriting descriptions that already exist somewhere |
| Format and check the proposal | 30 to 60 min | Copying into a template, fixing layout, last checks |
Add those up and a quote that needed perhaps half an hour of real expertise takes most of a day. That matches what vendors in the space report: one Croatian MICE DMC described proposals taking around ten hours each before they changed their process. The common thread is that the expensive part is retrieval and re-typing, not judgement.
How can a DMC cut quote turnaround time?
Each slow step above has a fix, and none of them needs a bigger team. They need the knowledge you already have to be findable and reusable.
1. Keep one source of truth for rates
If finding the current rate for a hotel means opening last year's contract and an email thread with the amendment, every quote starts with an hour of archaeology. Put every supplier rate, season and condition in one place, with the contract it came from attached, so the answer to "what does this room cost on 14 March" is one lookup.
2. Cost from a template, not a blank sheet
A costing template with your margin rules, tax treatment, currency handling and per-pax logic built in turns costing from construction into data entry. If you are still working out markup by hand on each quote, our guide to markup vs margin for DMCs shows the formulas worth fixing in place.
3. Build a description library
You have written about the same hotels, cities and excursions hundreds of times. Save the best version of each, with its images, and reuse it. Consultants then spend their writing time on what is specific to this client, which is the part that actually sells.
4. Ask the right questions up front
A brief missing dates, pax mix or budget leads to a proposal that gets sent back. A short checklist of what you need before quoting, sent with your acknowledgement, saves a full revision cycle.
- Travel dates, or the window and trip length.
- Number of travellers, ages and room configuration.
- Budget per person, or the hotel standard expected.
- Must-haves, deal-breakers and the occasion, if there is one.
- Whether the agent wants net or gross pricing and in which currency.
5. Send a strong first version, then refine
A clear proposal with one or two options, priced and with availability marked as on request where needed, beats a perfect one that arrives tomorrow. State what is confirmed and what is not, and the agent can start the conversation with their client while you firm it up.
Does a faster quote mean a less accurate one?
It should not, and if it does you lose more than you gain. A quote that has to be repriced after the client has seen it damages the agent's credibility with their client, and they remember who caused it. The point of the fixes above is that they make quotes faster and more accurate, because rates come from the contract rather than from memory and costing logic is the same every time.
How Totem helps
Totem was built around exactly these steps. Supplier contracts become a searchable rate library with the source attached, costings follow your margin, tax and currency rules automatically, and itineraries draw on your own library of descriptions and images. Your consultants plan the trip; Totem handles the retrieval and re-typing. If you want to see what that does to your turnaround, take a look at itineraries.
Questions people ask
- What is a good quote turnaround time for a DMC?
- Acknowledge within an hour and send a first priced proposal within one working day. Same-day is realistic for standard FIT requests; groups and MICE take longer but should come with a clear date.
- Why do travel agents care so much about response time?
- Agents usually send the same brief to several DMCs and have a client waiting. The first credible proposal sets the benchmark, and a slow reply often arrives after the client has already chosen.
- What slows down a DMC's quoting process the most?
- Finding current supplier rates, rebuilding the costing from scratch and rewriting itinerary copy. Route planning itself is usually quick for an experienced consultant.
- Can AI write travel quotes for a DMC?
- AI can draft itineraries and pull rates quickly, but it should work from your own contracts and content, with a person checking the result. Read more in can you trust ChatGPT to build a client itinerary.