Birtour partner programme: how the trade contracts an Azerbaijan DMC

Birtour is a Baku-based DMC and this is the commercial half of contracting us, written down. Net per-component rates you mark up, a 20 to 30 percent deposit with the balance 30 to 45 days out, NET30 once you have a delivery history, room blocks held 30 days from quote across every city in the programme, FAM at 60 percent off contracted net, and a named human replying inside one hour in Baku business hours. No fee, no tiers, no minimum volume.

Why we publish terms nobody else in this market publishes

We went looking for an Azerbaijani DMC that puts its trade terms on a public page in August 2026 and did not find one. The search for an Azerbaijan travel-agent partner programme currently returns a Disney recruiter in the United States, which tells you how empty the shelf is.

That gap is not an accident, and it is not a secret worth keeping. Three reasons we would rather publish:

• It filters. An agency that reads the deposit schedule and walks away has saved us both two weeks.
• It is checkable. Every number here appears elsewhere on this site and has done for months. You can hold us to a page we cannot quietly edit after the fact.
• The alternative looks worse. A DMC that will only discuss terms on a call is usually a DMC whose terms move depending on who is asking.

This page is the process. What things cost is a different question and it lives on the net rates and B2B pricing guide, which carries the 2026 ground-cost ranges and the group-rate breaks. This one is about how you become a partner and what you sign.

Who we contract with, and who we turn down

We contract with companies, not individuals. In practice that means:

Who we turn down, and it is worth saying out loud:

• A private traveller pretending to be an agency to reach net rates. We will quote you as a direct client instead, at a fair price. We are not going to pretend a family of four is a trade partner.
• Anyone who wants us invisible and unaccountable at the same time. White-label is normal and we do it constantly. Being asked to run a programme with no contract behind it, so that nobody owns the failure, is different.
• A brief that needs a routing that cannot be operated. A three-country overland Caucasus loop in 2026 is the usual one. We will re-cut it rather than sell it, and if you would rather find someone who will say yes, that is a real answer too.

How does onboarding actually work?

About a week, when the paperwork arrives complete on day one. It runs in five steps and nothing in it is a formality we invented to look established.

1. You send the company details. Registration or trading name, the entity we invoice, a named contact who owns files, the markets you sell in, and a rough sense of volume and season. That last part is not a sales question. It decides which hotels we take you to and at what contracted level.
2. We send ours. Tax registration number, the general-liability insurance certificate, and contactable references from operators in your region. Azerbaijan issues no tour-operator licence, so the tax number and the references are the credentials that actually exist here. Anyone offering you a licence number is offering you something that does not exist.
3. We agree the commercial shape. Net or commissionable, contracting currency, and whether you want allotment or on-request inventory. Fifteen minutes on a call, then in writing.
4. You get a named operations manager. A person, with a mobile number, who is responsible for your groups on the ground. Not a shared inbox and not a rotating duty phone.
5. First quote. Send a brief and we work to the standard below.

There is no application form, no annual fee, and no tier you climb. We have seen the tiered-partner model in this region and it mostly exists to make a small agency feel provisional.

Net or commissionable, and how you should choose

Net is our default and it is what most operators want, because it puts the margin decision on your side of the table. We quote per component: room nights at each property, transfers by vehicle class, guide days by language, entrances and permits each on their own line. You add your markup where you want it and quote your client in your own currency.

Commissionable is the right answer for a retail agency or a luxury advisor whose accounting runs on gross. We rewrite the same programme that way at the percentage you book at. We do not publish a percentage, and we would rather say that than print a number we then negotiate away from.

The test for which one you want is simple. If you are reselling to a client who never sees our paperwork, take net. If your business is paid a commission on a gross booking, take commissionable. If you do both in different parts of your business, we can hold both on the same contract.

What are the payment terms?

• Deposit: 20 to 30 percent on confirmation.
• Balance: due 30 to 45 days before travel.
• Established partners: NET30 against a delivery history.
• Currency: USD or EUR on the invoice. Net rates lock quarterly, with AZN variants where a supplier prices in manat.
• What we do not do: 100 percent up front, and invoicing to a personal account. Both are common enough in this market that they are worth naming.

The range on the deposit is real rather than decorative. Where it lands depends on how much of the programme sits on suppliers who take our money before they take yours, which in Baku is mostly hotel blocks in high season and anything charter.

What about cancellation, and why is there no ladder on this page?

Because we do not have one ladder. We have a contract clause that mirrors the suppliers standing behind your specific programme, and those differ enough that a single published scale would be a fiction.

A city-hotel programme in March and a Bilgah peninsula block over a public holiday do not carry the same exposure, and neither does anything with a charter or a hard venue deposit in it. What we commit to instead:

• The cancellation ladder and the force-majeure language are in the contract before you pay anything, not produced afterwards.
• It is expressed as dated windows with percentages, not as "as per supplier terms", which is the phrase to refuse.
• Where a specific line in your programme carries a harsher clause than the rest, we flag that line at quote rather than at cancellation.

If you want to compare us to another Baku company on this, the question that separates them is whether the ladder arrives with the quote or after the deposit.

Room blocks, allotment, and on-request

Thirty days from quote, synchronised across every city in the programme, under one contract. For a Baku, Gabala and Sheki itinerary that means three blocks alive at once and expiring together. Without standing hotel contracts the default in this market is a 7-day courtesy hold per property, which is close to unusable when you are still selling the trip to your own client.

For the Caucasus circuit we hold the same arrangement with contracted partner DMCs in Tbilisi and Yerevan, so a Baku, Tbilisi and Yerevan block sits under one operator agreement instead of three separate courtesy holds you have to chase. The routing constraints on that circuit are on its own operator guide, and they matter more in 2026 than they used to.

Allotment versus on-request is a per-partner conversation rather than a published policy. Series departures with a fixed calendar can carry allotment. Ad-hoc groups run on-request, which is the honest default for a partner in the first season. We would rather move you onto allotment after you have run three programmes than hand you inventory you release unused.

Can our product team come on a FAM?

Yes, at roughly 60 percent off contracted net, when your team is building Azerbaijan into a brochure or a site.

One condition, and it is not negotiable for us: the person travelling should be the one who writes the itinerary copy or owns the contracting. A FAM whose seats go to a sales incentive draw produces a nice week and no product. We would rather send one product manager who comes back and rewrites your Sheki page than five people who come back with photographs.

If your team is bringing a drone for brochure footage, tell us before they pack it. The civil UAV regime moved onto the mygov platform in January 2026 and registration has to be applied for within 10 working days of bringing the aircraft into the country. That is a call we would rather make three weeks out than at Heydar Aliyev.

How fast do we reply, and what happens when we miss it?

A named human replies within one hour during Baku business hours, GMT+4. A costed proposal with named hotels reaches you within 72 hours of a complete brief. Both of those standards are on the RFP guide with the brief format that earns the fast version.

Now the part most partner pages leave out. We do not publish a service credit, and we are not going to invent one on a web page. What we do instead:

• The one-hour standard applies to a named person, so when it slips you know exactly who to chase and you have their mobile.
• Baku works Monday to Friday. If your market works Sunday to Thursday, or your buying week is Saudi rather than European, that gap gets named in the contract during onboarding along with who covers it. We learned that one from the Israeli trade, where the four-day overlap catches people every year.
• If a brief is going to take longer than 72 hours because it needs a supplier answer we do not hold, you get told that inside the first hour rather than at hour 71.

What we do not publish

Four things, named here so you do not have to go looking for the catch.

• A commission percentage. It moves with volume and product mix. Ask in the first email.
• A single cancellation ladder. Covered above. It is contract-specific, and a published one would be misleading.
• An accreditation or association grade. We claim none on this site. Azerbaijan issues no tour-operator licence, the Tourism Board's public DMC directory returned no companies at all when we last checked it on 10 August 2026, and we would rather say that than let a badge imply a check that nobody performs.
• Payment mechanics for markets where they are genuinely unsettled. For some source markets the honest answer about settlement is that it is agreed per partner. When that is the answer we give it, rather than describing a route we have not run.

For operators comparing Baku ground partners before contracting anyone, the vetting checklist we would use ourselves is in how to choose an Azerbaijan DMC. For a partner ready to price a specific programme, send the brief format on the RFP page and we will work to the 72-hour standard above.