If I sign a contract with a new supplier myself, can I connect them to my booking system or do I have to wait for you to do it?

In most cases no, you cannot connect a brand new supplier entirely on your own, because every supplier hands out its own API in its own format and that has to be mapped into the booking flow before anything can be sold through it. What you can do yourself is turn the already supported suppliers on or off, enter your own contract credentials for them, and decide which ones your customers search first.

Adding a supplier that is not yet supported is development work. You need a signed contract with them and a set of test credentials, and then their search, booking, cancellation and ticketing calls are matched to the way the system already handles those same steps. How long it takes depends almost entirely on the supplier, on how clear their documentation is, and on how quickly their technical team replies while testing is going on. Some are certified in a couple of weeks, others sit in testing much longer because they run their own certification before they will open a live account.

There are also suppliers who will never connect. Many small hotel chains and local ground operators have no API at all, only an extranet or an email address, so their rooms and tours have to be loaded and kept up to date by hand instead. Whether an integration is covered by your plan or quoted separately also varies, so that is worth settling before you sign with the supplier rather than afterwards.

Before you commit, ask the supplier for their API documentation and a test account, then pass those to us so we can tell you honestly whether the connection is straightforward or not.