Dolphin Vendor Type Overview

The below are guidelines on each Dolphin vendor type and the circumstances in which each can be used. It is up to you to determine what vendor type you want to use. Although you could set all vendors as Other, we recommend that you think carefully about the implications of such approach.

Airline This vendor type is for airlines only. This is the only vendor type that you cannot upload via the vendor import tool as Dolphin requires the 2-letter carrier code to be entered, and this field is not available in the standard vendor import. Note: all airline vendors are already uploaded in your Dolphin database therefore you shouldn’t need to add airline vendors.

Busoperator This vendor type can be used for coach or touring companies, such as Greyhound Buses or National Express.

Carcompany This vendor type can be used for car hire providers such as Alamo, Avis or Affordable. Often, this vendor type is also used for companies offering car transfers such as Holiday Extras.

Consolidator This vendor type can be used for any provider offering multiple products, i.e. Gold Medal, Aviate, Bedsonline.

Correspondent This vendor type is part of the legacy system. Some Dolphin customers may still use this for DMC’s however it isn’t generally used in today’s market.

Cruise This vendor type can be used for cruise and river cruise providers.

Insurance This vendor type can be used for insurance providers.

Hotel This vendor type can be used for accommodations.  Note: it should not be used for bed banks (which should be under consolidator, tour operator or other) or hotel head offices (which should be under hotelchain).

Hotelchain This vendor type can be used for hotel chains head offices, i.e. Hilton.  It is used to link hotels together so that you can report on hotel bookings within a chain, and record supplier payments to the hotel chain instead of the individual properties.  Note: it should not be used for individual properties, i.e. Hilton Metropole, which should instead be saved as Hotel.  

Other This vendor type can be used for any supplier you want.

Railway This vendor type can be used for train providers such as South Western Railway, Eurostar and DBahn.

Touroperator This vendor type can be used for providers that put together a package for you, such as jet2holidays, TUI, Kuoni etc.

Charter This vendor type is part of the legacy system, some customers may still use this for chartered carriers, however it isn’t generally used in today's market.

Hotelpackage This vendor type is part of the legacy system. Some customers may still use this for bed banks, however it isn’t generally used in today's market.

Important note

There are two areas that the vendor type can affect:

1. Reporting: the vendor type can be targeted when running reports in Dolphin, although it is also possible to use different criteria to extract statistics.
2. Travel folders: you can configure Dolphin so that when users search for a supplier to build an itinerary, the search results will only return vendor profiles set to the vendor type related to the itinerary tab they’re in (Hotel vendors in the Hotel tab, Carcompany vendors in the Car tab, Touroperator vendors in the Tour tab, Railway vendors in the Rail tab, Cruise vendors in the Cruise and Insurance vendors in the Insurance tab).  This setting can be enabled/disabled as required.