Glossary · Travel distribution
Point of sale (POS)
Point of sale (POS), in travel, is the market in which a fare or rate is sold — usually the country of the seller or of the website edition the traveller uses — and airlines, hotels and other suppliers can set different prices, conditions and availability for each one.
Reviewed 30 Oct 2026
How the point of sale is determined
For a travel agency booking through a GDS, the point of sale is the agency's own location as configured in the system. Airlines can file fares that may only be sold from certain markets: a GDS vendor's documentation notes that when a point-of-sale restriction is filed and the seller is not in a permitted market, the fare displays as unsaleable.
On a supplier's or agency's website, the market is the country edition the visitor is on, which is commonly chosen from the visitor's IP address along with language and currency. Switching the currency selector usually converts the same fare; it does not move you into another market.
Why the same trip costs different amounts
- Fares and promotions filed for one market and not another.
- Taxes, fees and payment surcharges that differ by country of sale.
- Currency conversion and rounding applied by the seller.
- Inventory a supplier releases to some markets before others.
The mechanics, with worked examples, are in why flight prices differ by country.
What EU law says
For air services from an airport in an EU member state, Article 23(2) of Regulation (EC) No 1008/2008 requires that fares available to the general public be accessible without discrimination based on the customer's nationality or place of residence, or on where the airline's agent or other ticket seller is established within the Community. How that applies to a particular price difference is a question for counsel, not a glossary.
Collecting prices by point of sale
Query each market from an address inside it, with identical routes, dates and passenger mix, and store the market alongside every observation. A proxy with country geo-targeting is how one collector covers several markets; airline fare collection and the wider travel fare aggregation page show the setup.
FAQ
Questions
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Is point of sale the same as the currency a price is shown in?
No. The point of sale is the market the fare is sold in; the currency is how it is displayed. Changing the currency on a booking page usually converts the same market's fare rather than requesting another market's fare.
Does my IP address decide the point of sale?
Often it is one of the inputs. Websites commonly pick the country edition from the visitor's IP, and the account country, chosen site edition or payment card country can also play a part. Agencies booking through a GDS have their point of sale set by their configured location.
Is point-of-sale pricing allowed in the EU?
For flights from EU airports, Regulation 1008/2008 Article 23(2) requires publicly available fares to be accessible without discrimination by the customer's nationality or residence, or by the seller's place of establishment within the EU. Whether a specific difference complies is a legal question for counsel.
How do fare aggregators handle point of sale?
They treat it as a dimension of every price: the same route and date is collected separately per market, from an exit in that market, and stored with the market code so prices are only compared within one point of sale or explicitly across them.
Sources & review
Last reviewed by the ARC Proxies team. Prices are read from the live catalog at build time.
In practice