Does anyone do inside travel agents to book holidays anymore

[88greebballoons]

Just wondering, as looking on line as we usually do, prices are just ridiculous and then someone told me going inside travel agents they can sometimes save you a lot of money. I can't see it as surely they make a profit?

I think you need to differentiate between travel agent and tour operator.
tour operators can 100% be cheaper - I worked for one for years!
it’s just the same as any product - they get wholesale rates and mark up.
let’s say the rack Rate (selling To public rate) was £100 per person per night.
We’d get a nett rate of say £80 a night and then sell it to you for £100 a night - therefore making money.
if we had a great relationship with a hotel, they may give us a nett rate of £70 a night. We may then sell this to you at £90 a night so cheaper.
also I worked in a more niche market with lots of small over run camps and they didn’t sell direct, only through tour operators as they didn’t want to deal with any of the hassle of dealing with logistics etc - the operator would deal with all of that.

an agent though is just a middle man who usually takes the trip and adds a commission.

I still go into the Tui branch to book our holiday. My DS has allergies as well as other issues and we also need assistance at the airport so I always go in and book so that the agent can help me find somewhere that has all the things I need.

Its always quite busy when I go in. But it's normally January so probably peak time.

I've always arranged holidays myself because I have found Travel Agents to be more expensive because of lack of flexibility for the type of holiday I want.

The price is an issue if you're travelling as a family of 4. We tend to do tours and have seen some good ones with Tour Operators. However if there are 4 travelling you pay 4 times the cost. But the holiday wouldn't cost that much, there are economies of scale. A taxi for 4 costs the same as a taxi for 2; the lovely apartments that I usually book don't cost much more than a hotel room for 2.

We've just come back from 2 weeks in Mexico, staying in a mix of beautiful hotels and apartments. The total cost including flights, transport, all food and activities was about £7,500 so about £1,900 each. The organised tours that I saw cost not much less than that without flights and a lot of meals, and in basic 3* hotels.

We use a travel consultant.
Usually DH or I will find the holiday that we want, send the details to her to see if they can do the same holiday but cheaper or including upgrades.
Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't.

We have a holiday booked for October where their price was something like £30 more that the holiday I found, but then you have the bonus that if there's any issues, she's on call to help and sort them out.
If the price difference was huge, we would've just booked it ourselves

DH has just reminded me of an issue with flights via a travel agent. Holiday to Bali for family of 6; student son travelling from a different airport already on his way when they went to check in.

They were told at check in that they could see the names but that the travel agent had gone bust so hadn't paid for the flights. They got the original £500 per flight back eventually but had to pay about £2000 per flight at the last minute.

I used trailfinders recently for a specific two centre long haul trip, 3 flights, nearly fainted at the price, I've not been abroad for at least 5 years and usually book independently so I assumed I could get it cheaper. Not a chance, their deal turned out to be better than i could find.

I probably would go to a travel agent. Purely because we haven't been abroad for about 15 years and I wouldn't have a bloody clue what I was doing these days. Travel has changed a lot over the last decade, so I'm clueless now.

Like @TitaniasAss I haven't been abroad for 23 yrs & am clueless tech-wise.
I was dithering between a week in a hotel or trying to do some Interrailing.
I went to 3 different High St travel agents & said:
A week in Malta in May, 2 adults 1 child. Budget s/c accom. £3K avail. Possible?
One sent me a cruise for 8K, 2 others sent me 6K AI hols. Not suitable at all.
So now I think I will spend my £3K on an Interrailling trip & see how far I get.
Someone on MN has kindly pointed me to a good train tickets site.
But I have no idea how to budget for hostels & food.
I wish there was a High St travel agents for this !!!

We use an independent travel agent when we want to put a tour together or something that tour operators don’t offer eg., we went to the opera at Verona and then wanted to go to a hotel on Lake Garda for a few days. If we are booking a package, we do it ourselves. If

I use Trailfinders for anything (which is most of the time) complicated because (1) the package is ATOL protected, which will not be the case if you book each element separately; (2) they hold all your money on trust till you go, which is more or less unheard of and meant that during Covid I had every penny returned in short order; and (3) they can recommend nice hotels and good things to see and do.

I don't think you have any more protection from ATOL than you do if you book and travel independantly using a credit card.

DH and I had the same conversation recently; we wanted to book a hotel room with direct access to a pool for when the baby is asleep but this doesn't seem to be something you can filter for on the main travel operators' websites. Wondered if a travel agent would have any better search tools but remembered when we last went in years ago to look at options for a road trip and they spent the best part of an hour just Googling the flights out, before finding us a less convenient one than we'd already seen. It didn't look like they could see/search for anything we couldn't, so we politely made our excuses to leave at that point. That seems to tally with the experience of a number of others here.

The main operators don't book swim up rooms with kids! Ours is 10 we went with easyJet holidays then contacted the hotel to upgrade.

I don't understand why anyone would do it either. Maybe a smaller independent travel agent can save me money. But like a PP says, I use tripadvisor forums, facebook groups and blogs to research places. I don't go to a beach resort though. For example, I'm researching trips to Japan and South Korea. I have a pretty good idea where I want to be in Japan (having done the Tokyo to Kyoto route pre children). I will just book my accomodation with booking.com or hotel.com. It has to be easier than booking online 15 years ago.

Oh interesting - makes sense for when they're more mobile! Although were shown/able to book swim up rooms in the end, perhaps because we specified that DD is under 1, so less of a risk?

We were thinking of going to Thailand in November, as it's somewhere we haven't been before I was quite keen to book through a travel agent.
The online one was great sadly can't remember what company she was with, but provided a quote quickly with estimates for flights that weren't yet released and was happy to tailor it based on my requests. When I priced up doing it separately the cost was about the same if not cheaper than going through her.

However I went into Hays and Trailfinders and wasn't impressed with either of them. At Hays the lady phoned up the travel company and I sat and watched her for 15 minutes, she then seemed quite miffed when I asked if she would just email the quote. Trailfinders took my details and said they would send out a quote when the flights were released- they have never got back to me.

In the end we didn't go ahead because the cancellation costs were so much higher than if I had just booked the flights myself and got cancellable hotels - I have very elderly DPs so it's a bit of a risk booking a big trip in advance.

I can't really see how travel agents survive.

Oh and when DS was younger I always asked for a suite rather than a room, or at least a separate area for him to sleep. The travel agents never seemed to be able to cater for that without coming up with ludicrously expensive hotels - because they have a limited range.

I don't think you have any more protection from ATOL than you do if you book and travel independantly using a credit card.

This is incorrect. When booking a package including flights with a tour op you are then booking a holiday that is governed by the package travel regulations. This means should the airline go bust/something happen that means you cant get there (ATC issues like last year, covid, wild fires, flight going tech) - you are entitled to a full refund of the ENTIRE package. You book separate on a credit card then if the airline goes bust of cancels the flight then the airline will refund you the flight. Anything else you have paid for, hotels/attractions/car hire, the credit card company would not refund you. Those companies can still give you what you have booked, its not their fault you cant get there. Normal travel insurance also doesnt cover this either.

My mum did this last year with my eldest, used coop travel agency in town, and has been raving about how easy and worry free the whole thing was compared to when she usually goes away

1. But the Package Travel Regulations may well change and become weaker post Brexit.
2. l know people who booked an Australian package in a wild fire area several years ago snd the tour operator would not let them change because the hotel was still open.
3. You can book free cancellation options with reputable on line agents such as Expedia, Booking.com etc and cancel because you simply change your mind, or there is a price drop. Package companies don’t do that.

My mum does.
There's an independent one in her town, that she's booked her past few holidays through.
I'm not sure what the perks are particularly, but mum likes them because they'll do the grunt work for her.

Second Trailfinders, they were very useful for a trip to Australia later this year. Found me a flight and a hotel once they knew my budget, all done and booked and deposit paid.

We only use one for cruise bookings. We've used Bolsover Cruises ever since we booked our first cruise through them and they are great. We did a bit of chopping and changing when our 2020 cruise was cancelled due to COVID; they sorted out future cruise credit, dealt with P&O on our behalf. I can't fault them.

We have a independent travel agents in our village. Our friends used them for a long haul trip last year and said they were comparable with online prices. They also sorted out transfers, airport hotels, internal flights, all of which would have take a lot of time and effort on our friends part. They were very pleased and have used them again since then.