For travel advisors
What to include when you send a trip request to a DMC
A trip request to a DMC should include exact dates or a window with stated flexibility, party composition with children’s ages, arrival and departure points, service level in concrete terms, explicit inclusions and exclusions, an honest budget band, and your decision timeline. These are the variables that change the price.
Every omission becomes an assumption
A DMC cannot price an unspecified variable, so it does the only other thing available: it assumes. Two DMCs assuming differently produce two proposals that cannot be compared, and neither may match what your client wanted.
The cost is not just accuracy. Each missing field is a clarification email, and each email is a day - multiplied by however many DMCs you approached.
The checklist
Everything here changes a number. If you know it, send it.
- Exact dates, or the window and how flexible it genuinely is
- Number of travellers, their relationships, and children’s ages at time of travel
- Arrival and departure points, and whether internal flights or transfers are in scope
- Accommodation standard in concrete terms - property tier, room category, any must-have properties
- Guiding and transport standard - private or shared, vehicle class, language
- Pace and interests, and anything the client will not do
- Accessibility, dietary and medical requirements
- Explicit exclusions - what you are handling yourself
- Budget band, and whether it is per person or total, and in which currency
- Whether you need net or commissionable rates
- Your decision timeline, and how many DMCs you are approaching
On budget, specifically
The most common omission is the budget, usually in the belief that naming it invites a DMC to spend all of it.
In practice, withholding it produces a proposal aimed at the wrong tier - which costs a full revision cycle and tells you nothing about the supplier. A band rather than a single figure gives the DMC room to show what is genuinely achievable, and lets them tell you early if the brief and the budget do not meet.
Send the same brief to everyone
If you are approaching more than one DMC, send all of them the identical request. Proposals written from different information are not comparable, and the effort you save writing one brief once is smaller than the effort wasted reconciling three incompatible answers.
Frequently asked questions
What information should I include when sending a trip request to a DMC?
Exact dates or a window with stated flexibility, party composition including children’s ages, arrival and departure points, accommodation and guiding standards in concrete terms, pace and interests, accessibility and dietary requirements, explicit exclusions, an honest budget band with currency, whether you need net or commissionable rates, and your decision timeline.
Should I tell a DMC my client’s budget?
Yes, as a band rather than a single figure. Withholding it produces proposals aimed at the wrong tier and an unnecessary revision cycle. A stated band lets the DMC show what is achievable and flag early if the brief and budget do not meet.
How much detail is too much in a trip request?
Detail that changes the price or the plan is never too much. Detail that constrains how a DMC solves the problem can be - specifying the exact route removes their local knowledge, which is what you are buying. State outcomes and constraints; let them propose the route.
Should I send the same trip request to multiple DMCs?
Yes, and it should be identical for each. Proposals written from different briefs cannot be compared fairly, and normalising them afterwards is far more work than authoring one structured request and sending it to everyone.