When to Use a Travel Agent

Know your travel tastes

My wife and I have been booking our Autumn vacation and have learned a startling fact.

Despite my deeply rooted geek bias, where technology is the answer to life, the universe and everything, there are occasions where (*gasp*) travel agents can be useful!

You might be as shocked as I am, but it is true, believe me.

My usual approach to booking any kind of trip is to hit the travel search engines and cost comparison sites. I would never book a flight without looking it up on Fly.co.uk and I book my car rental through carrentals.co.uk - these are a given. But there are circumstances where a travel agent does have the edge over even the best google jocky.

1. Location knowledge - The guide books and websites are fantastic, but some times you need to talk to someone. The internet can not help when you do not know what you do not know, and you will be surprised how much personal experience some of the better travel agents have about the destinations you are looking at. What should you see and do? What is a let down? How should you get around? Will we have enough time during a stop over to see a tour? Will two days be enough in that city? Where are the good restaurants? Are water taxi rides better than the cruise?
2. Specialist knowledge - Visa, travel options, laws, procedures, technicalities, there are so many more things to get right when doing big trips than just which gate and flight number you need! The bigger the trip, the more travel logistics you need to get right.
3. Fast selling seats - Sometimes you find a deal, talk it over with your spouse, then see the seats are sold out. This happened with us scarily fast, but luckily we had spoken to a travel agent who managed to hold some seats for us. You will also find some bigger operators have reservations on rooms and flights that are not available online. It is worth a try if you find you missed out on a great deal.
   

   Is that taxi a fair fare or a rip-off ride?

4. Time scarcity - Time is money. If your time is precious then you might be better outsourcing all these headaches to someone else!
5. Peculiar requirements - I have to admit, we are getting picky about our travel arrangements. The more we travel, the more we find things we do not want to experience again. One in particular was my wife getting squashed all the way back from New York by a massive hulk of a man who took up his own seat and most of hers. Another is my wife is not great with small planes. While I find it exciting, she would rather forget that she is flying as much as possible. I also like to use 100% reliable transport rather than flag down a potentially rip off taxi. This all combines to a lot of tiny details to sort out, which could be handled by an expert rather than try to work through it ourselves.

If you are willing to trade price for any of these, then the travel agent is the way ahead. They will probably not be able to beat an internet price, but they know that the web is eating into their market with fierce competition so have to provide added value in other ways, so they could be worth a try when you really need that extra help.

Do you book online or talk to human beings when booking travel arrangements? Please share in the comments …