Are travel agents obsolete?

March 23, 2005 11:46 AM

Does anyone still use travel agents?

Booking this year's vacation entirely online, for the first time, we wondered if anyone still finds a use for travel agents. We had two agents quote us airfare and car rental prices, and ended up finding better rates on the big travel sites. Are there any advantages to using a travel agent?

posted by icetaco to Travel & Transportation (19 answers total)

Well, I know the chances of it happening are slim, but when the Jestgo carrier in Canada went belly up just before spring break, the only people who got replacement tickets were those who booked through a travel agent, because Ontario and Quebec law forces them to insure their purchases (or something to that effect). People who purchased over the web were not entitled to any refund.
posted by furtive at 11:50 AM on March 23, 2005

My family is planning a trip this spring and due to lack of time on our part we went through an agent who happens to be a friend. I really wish I had done it myself though.
posted by bondcliff at 11:57 AM on March 23, 2005

My wife and I just used a travel agent to arrange an 8-day trip to Europe. Sure, we could have saved some money if we had researched the whole thing, but she was able to make a lot of suggestions on flight times, hotels, Europass thingies, and so on. She was very helpful, and has answered a lot of questions we would have had to go look up.
posted by agropyron at 11:58 AM on March 23, 2005

less and less... but yes
posted by scarabic at 12:01 PM on March 23, 2005

Yes. People who know where they want to go but don't have the time to research stuff online (and don't care how much they pay). People who don't have internet access (I know they're out there somewhere). People who wouldn't know where to begin if they did want to do it themselves. Using a travel agent is also a good way to avoid issues; if the airline cancels your flights, the hotel loses your reservation, etc... you have a professional who will fix everything for you.
posted by suchatreat at 12:01 PM on March 23, 2005

For simple things, go online.

But for complex plans, a good travel agent is the way to go.

You have to understand that the variations and permutations once you get past anything like a simple, fixed rountrip and into stopovers, multi-city flights etc. becomes more complex than modern systems can handle.

I once had to be in Europe the next day. Had to be. I spent about three hours on the phone with a fantastic travel agent who after looking at option after option, trying different connecting citiies, looking at local cheap carriers, researching discounts that may apply, tweaking the dates in just the right way etc. etc. was able to get me to where I wanted, and cheaply too.

Moments like those, the best travel agents are like great chess players. Arguably, the modern airfare system combined with route maps is a more complex game than chess.
posted by vacapinta at 12:07 PM on March 23, 2005

I use them occasionally when I travel for work for two reasons

1. I like to fly out of a small airport which is near me and they can often get deals on tickets by getting tickets with two airlines [so I fly from here to NYC and then from there to my final destination] in ways I don't seem to be able to online. In fact, my local airport isn't even available in a lot of those priceline/yahoo travel places.

2. sometimes travel agents are the way to go if you want the people who are paying for your trip to pay ahead of time, not just reimburse you. I have used the travel agents from various companies so that the company would pay for the ticket. I was surprised that the ticket costs weren't much higher than I usually paid. Having someone else check prices out of flying out of three potential airports and into two potential airports was a great luxury.
posted by jessamyn at 12:37 PM on March 23, 2005

My mom does. She's internet savvy, but would rather let someone else plan the details. She likes going on big, arranged tours, and she doesn't much care how much she spends.

At my last job at a big 5 accounting firm, we always used our dedicated American Express agents. Cost wasn't nearly as much as an issue as was schedule, documentation, staying in the approved hotels, using the contracted airlines, all that.
posted by MrMoonPie at 12:48 PM on March 23, 2005

For trips to Japan, I do: Japan Travel Bureau is a huge consolidator, and they can offer better fares than I can find on Orbitz or whatever. There may be other destinations where there's a specific go-to agency, if only you know what it is.

For domestic travel, I do it online.
posted by adamrice at 12:54 PM on March 23, 2005

Most tour companies still only book through travel agents. They won't deal directly with customers.
posted by smackfu at 12:58 PM on March 23, 2005

I used a travel agent for the last time for a trip to Chile last summer. I saved a couple hundred dollars overall, but they screwed things up big time in the booking of my flights. If I had done it myself I would have paid a little more, but it would have been done right.
posted by wezelboy at 1:07 PM on March 23, 2005

Beware. If you are a meticulous person, you might end-up doing a better job with the planning. We had an agent book a 3-week trip in Italy last summer. The only reason we did this was because we wanted additional private tours of each city, and personal transportation. It was very expensive, but we didn't want to have to arrange it ourselves. Unfortunately, our agent completely overlooked specific time restraints. Because she was our agent, we trusted her, and relied on her to do the prudent research. Which made us lazy. I mean, why bother to go over her work, right? It's her job. However, she clearly was incapable.

For instance, we allowed our agent to book our visit to the Scrovengi chapel in Padua. However, we were to be arriving from Tuscany, which was a good four hours distance from Padua. After the visit to the Scrovengi chapel, we were to drive an hour to Venice to catch our evening taxi escort from the docks to our hotel at a certain hour. However, our lame travel agent failed to anticipate that we would need extra time to drop-off our car at the rental agency, and seriously underestimated the time it would take to drive from Tuscany to Padua, and we completely missed our reservations at the Scrovengi Chapel.

Also, when she booked the car for us, she booked an automatic by default without asking us, nor did we think about it because having booked previously autos in England/France, we always got 5-speed, and we assumed in the rest of Europe we would automatically get a 5-speed. Ugh. It was horrible, and we even had to pay extra for the 'benefit' of having an automatic. His name was Vito, and he was the suck. My entire family drives stick, and we knew that we got stuck with the horrible car because of the scarcity of automatic cars in europe.

Another oversight is that she booked us into a horrible hotel in Firenze, and we even decided to 'swallow' a night and find our own accomodations for the rest of the visit in that city. We thought it was a dump, but she was probably used to booking people there who thought it was a palace. She didn't understand or know our particular standards at all.

Also concerning hotels, she booked us into hotels that had consolidation rates, which almost always means that the hotel caters to other annoying Americans and large American groups. Every booking she gave us, we researched, and found that like all these major U.S. travel companies offered the same bookings. So we definitely got stuck with a lot of other American families, which is kind of annoying when you are abroad. You don't want to be surrounded by people you normally see at the mall on Saturday.

My point is if you pick a bad agent, you get kinda screwed, because you rely on their judgement. In theory, my family is very meticulous, and we would have never made the mistakes or oversights she made with some of the bookings.

The only good thing about our agent is that using her allowed us to book the private transport, and allowed us access to the private street tours. The advantage to getting private tours is that they arrange all the tickets, and in Italy in the summer, we got to bypass all the lines. We literally walked right past all the people waiting, which was a huge time saver. Aside from that, using the agent sucked, and didn't really save us any time planning the trip. Make sure the agent has the same standards as you, too.
posted by naxosaxur at 1:24 PM on March 23, 2005

My dad's company uses one to book business trips, I believe. I'd guess that for business use they're much more common nowadays than for private use. I also expect that there's certain kinds of trips (e.g. cruises) that it's still very hard to book without going through an agent, though I don't know this from personal experience.
posted by advil at 1:35 PM on March 23, 2005

Some travel agents specialize in certain things - for example, cruises. (In fact, I seem to remember a travel magazine article that listed the top travel agents for setting up a cruise.) As others have pointed out, a lot has to do with whether travel plans are (relatively) routine or not, if a foreign country is involved or not, and the amount of time (and expertise) that someone has who is considering the alternative (do-it-yourself via the web, and with phone calls).

But there still clearly are folks using them, or there wouldn't be any listings for travel agents in phone books.
posted by WestCoaster at 1:51 PM on March 23, 2005

I've used them more in the last few years that I've been travelling to/from Australia. When your dates and route are flexible, it's much easier to get them to do the leg work. Flight Centre also has a pledge to beat any published fare (including Internet) so we've often researched online and presented them with a fare before we start. They were especially useful two years ago when our trip home to the US was so expensive that it was only marginally more expensive to get around-the-world tickets, and our agent was able to quickly navigate all the red tape to book the necessary flights. If we'd been looking online we might not have checked out that option.
posted by web-goddess at 2:02 PM on March 23, 2005

My dad's company uses one to book business trips, I believe.

I can't imagine using them for my personal travel, but Carlson-Wagonlit has the Defense Department business. We have to use them, and yes, they suck.
posted by fixedgear at 2:36 PM on March 23, 2005

A friend and I had a complicated itinerary for a wedding a few years ago. I was flying from Seattle, she from DC, we were meeting in NYC, then a day later, heading to London, then five days later, both heading to MSP. We really wanted to be on the same flight both to London and to MSP since those are horrendously long. Every option I put together online either didn't work or was unbelievably expensive. She called a travel agent who got us a decent deal.

Otherwise, I do it all myself.
posted by GaelFC at 4:31 PM on March 23, 2005

Last year I was in an airplane about every two weeks. Mostly international flights and mostly to small airports via larger hubs. I consistantly use the same agent who never fails to see me right. Ticket changes are no big deal - just a call or an email away though I have to pay the penalty.
Try that in Mexico without loosing hours standing in a queue somewhere! I also get the agent to quote me on car hire as often they have corporate rates which they pass on for a small handling fee. Hotels I usually find on my own on line. European budget airlines and Sansa in Costa Rica do it yourself online.
posted by adamvasco at 4:51 PM on March 23, 2005

I think the internet makes it easy to get ballpark figures/ideas. I have booked domestic airfares before but it isn't always the last word.
The travel industry is an esoteric and closed world (something that has annoyed me for years and years)- they each have specific deals with different operators and are notified of savings/deals etc whereas that information may not be published online and may only be available to select travel agents and their clients.
From the anecdotes above, if you find a trustworthy agent then they are able to advise from a position of knowledge.
Web-goddess....Flight Centre (Sydney) are great, I've used them a number of times in the last 10 or so years
posted by peacay at 9:24 PM on March 23, 2005