GST Billing for Travel Agents and Tour Operators in India — Complete Guide

Travel in India is booming right now — domestic tourism at record highs, international travel fully back, and travel agents and tour operators busier than they've been in years.

But GST compliance in this space is genuinely confusing. Different rates for different services, TCS on travel packages, domestic versus international rules, and hotel bookings, airline tickets, and your own service fee each getting entirely different GST treatment.

Get it wrong, and your clients run into ITC problems. Get it wrong repeatedly, and the GST department notices.

Here's the full breakdown — correct rates for every travel service, SAC codes, TCS rules, and how GST Maker handles the billing side of it.

GST across the different services you actually sell

Your own service fee or commission — whatever you charge for booking flights, hotels, or holidays — is your primary income, and it's taxable at 18% under SAC 998551. This is the most straightforward part: whatever markup, fee, or commission you charge, 18% applies.

Domestic tour packages — a complete bundle of accommodation, transport, sightseeing, and meals — run at 5% with no ITC, the same structure as restaurants: a lower rate, but no input credit on the components you bought to build the package.

International tour packages, where the tour happens entirely outside India and services are consumed abroad, are zero-rated at 0%. If any part of the package involves services within India — a pre-departure hotel, a domestic leg — that India portion may attract GST separately.

Hotel booking commission — the fee you earn facilitating a hotel booking, separate from what the client pays the hotel directly — is taxable at 18%.

Flight ticket booking — airlines already charge GST on the ticket itself (5% economy, 12% business), so you don't charge GST on the ticket price. You only charge it on your own service fee or commission for the booking.

Visa assistance services sit at 18%, same as travel insurance commission.

TCS on tour packages — an income tax rule, not GST

Worth separating this clearly from GST entirely — under Section 206C(1G) of the Income Tax Act, tour operators selling packages above ₹7 lakh per person need to collect 5% TCS from the client.

Book a ₹10,00,000 package, and 5% TCS comes to ₹50,000, bringing the total invoice to ₹10,50,000 plus GST on your service fee. That TCS gets deposited with the Income Tax department, and the client gets credit for it in their own ITR.

This only kicks in above ₹7 lakh per person — smaller packages don't trigger it at all.

SAC codes for travel and tourism

AI Magic Fill suggests the right code as you type your service description.

How this actually works for a travel business

Set up your agency profile once — name, GSTIN, address, logo, bank details — carried on every invoice after.

Save each service type separately — domestic package, international package, visa service, hotel commission — each with its own SAC code and rate, so the right one applies automatically rather than relying on staff to remember which service gets which rate.

Save corporate travel clients with GSTIN, address, and state, since these tend to be your highest-value accounts — CGST+SGST or IGST applies automatically based on location.

For package tours, add multiple line items — accommodation, transport, sightseeing, meals — under the overall 5% rate, or build a fully itemised invoice if a client needs that level of detail.

Send the invoice link the moment a booking's confirmed, so corporate clients can forward it straight to their accounts team, and individual clients have a proper record on their phone.

For corporate travel on a retainer, recurring invoices auto-generate on schedule without repeated manual work.

And for anything charged at 18% (your commission and service fee side), the Expense Tracker captures business expenses for proper ITC claims.

A travel agency in Mumbai

Horizon Holidays handles domestic and international travel for individuals and corporate accounts — booking fees at 18%, domestic packages at 5%, visa assistance at 18%, corporate travel management at 18%, and international packages at 0% when fully outside India.

They used to run different invoice templates per service type, and applying the right rate — 5% vs 18% vs 0% — was a constant source of confusion for billing staff. Corporate clients delayed payment over inconsistent invoice formats, and their CA spent 4-5 hours a month sorting through different invoice types just for GSTR-1.

Now every service type is saved separately with its correct SAC code and rate, staff just select the service and the rate applies itself, Mumbai corporate clients get CGST+SGST automatically, everyone outside Maharashtra gets IGST, and invoice links go out on WhatsApp the moment a booking's confirmed. Their CA's GSTR-1 report now takes 2 minutes.

Wrong-rate invoices dropped to zero after switching, and corporate payment turnaround improved from 20+ days down to under 10.

A tour operator in Jaipur

RoyalRajasthan Tours runs heritage tours, desert safaris, and palace hotel packages for Indian tourists, NRI groups, and foreign visitors — domestic packages at 5%, the India portion of inbound foreign tourist packages at 5%, and corporate MICE events at 18% on their coordination fee.

Their invoices used to run through Word with manual tax math, NRI and foreign client invoices were a particular source of confusion around IGST versus no GST, and group bookings of 30+ people took hours to itemize properly.

Now domestic packages go out at 5% in one click, corporate MICE invoices sit separately at 18%, client GSTIN and state are saved for automatic CGST+SGST or IGST, and group tour invoices with per-person pricing take under 5 minutes regardless of group size.

Their MICE business — which needs formal GST invoices for corporate procurement — has grown noticeably since billing stopped being the bottleneck.

A solo travel consultant in Bengaluru

Kavitha plans customised international holidays for high-net-worth clients, earning through both supplier commissions and direct client fees, with annual income around ₹22-28 lakh, making registration mandatory.

Her billing covers an 18% service fee for holiday planning, 18% commission invoices to hotels and resorts for referrals, and 5% for domestic getaway packages.

Now her international planning fee runs under SAC 998551 at 18%, hotel commission invoices use the same code with IGST for out-of-Karnataka hotels, domestic packages sit separately at 5%, and every trip gets a proforma invoice before payment, converting to a tax invoice once travel's complete. Her GSTR-1 report is ready in 2 minutes, letting her file her own returns without a CA.

That's ₹15,000-20,000 saved a year in CA fees, purely from handling her own billing and filing with clean, organized reports.

A few things worth doing right from the start

Keep your service fee and package cost as clearly separate line items — since they carry different rates, mixing them on one line just creates confusion about why two rates appear on the same invoice.

For corporate clients, send the invoice before the trip, not after — accounts teams process in advance, and an invoice arriving post-trip just misses the payment cycle entirely.

Keep TCS documentation clearly separate from GST — they're different systems (Income Tax vs GST), and mixing TCS into the GST line just muddies both.

For international packages, mark them clearly as "0% GST — Export of Services" rather than leaving the line blank, since a client expecting to see GST can get confused when it's genuinely just not there.

And always verify a corporate client's GSTIN before their first invoice — a wrong one causes ITC trouble for them and a GSTR-2B mismatch for you, and saving it verified once removes that risk on every repeat booking.

Questions people usually ask

What GST rate does a travel agent charge? 18% on service fee or commission, 5% on domestic packages, 0% on international packages consumed entirely abroad.

Is GST charged on airline tickets? Yes, by the airline directly — 5% economy, 12% business — you only charge GST on your own booking fee.

What's TCS on travel packages, and when does it apply? A 5% Income Tax collection above ₹7 lakh per person, separate from GST entirely.

Does GST apply to international packages sold by Indian agents? Zero-rated if fully consumed abroad; any India-based portion may attract GST separately.

Can travel agents claim ITC? Yes, on the 18% commission/service-fee side. Blocked under the 5% domestic package scheme, same as the restaurant rule.

Is this free for travel agents and tour operators? Yes — tax invoices, proforma invoices, recurring invoices, client management, expense tracking, and GSTR-1 reporting, all in the free plan.

Book more trips. Bill professionally. For free.

Clients choose you because you make travel effortless. Your billing should feel just as effortless — fast, compliant, and out on WhatsApp before the client's even home.

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