To use a travel agent for holiday bookings

[Nomorepants]

Why does anyone need a travel agent in this day and age? With airlines and hotels coveting and soliciting direct business, booking via an agent can feel old fashioned.

And yet… the value of service and support reigns especially when things go wrong, whether travelling for leisure or business.

Not the best end to a holiday when you turn up at the airport to find a certain orange liveried airline has cancelled the flight, with zero notification (despite the fact they also cancelled the inbound flight 4 hours + previously).

In the time that 100’s of direct customers queued for news, our agent had arranged for the driver to turn around, take us back to our hotel and rebooked us to fly home tomorrow. A vast improvement from the ground staff: ‘the next flight is on Saturday, book it yourselves’. Kudos to the independent agent Cachet Travel.

Our next trip is booked through Trailfinders. Hopefully no cancellations but again brilliant service and significant savings compared with booking via the airline as they were able to create a package with flights and car hire.

Well more fool the 100% of customers. Queuing for news lol. If the agent had rebooked you could quite easily have done that yourself in a taxi to hotel while the others queued lol. And hadn't you actually seen that the inbound flight had been cancelled which would've given you a head start? I always track the incoming flight for ones I plan to take .

Travel agents ( proper independent ones ) are great for difficult flight itenaries and highly personalized trip. No need for them on a regular flight/ hotel combo

But we wouldn’t have known about this perfect hotel without them!

But tracking inbound flight is genius and a top tip I will take heed of!

Who's saying you're unreasonable for using a travel agent? No skin off their nose, surely?

Why does there have to be a right or wrong? Fine to use a travel agent, fine not to. Personal choice innit...

Absolutely depends on the trip. European city break, no. Two weeks driving in California, flying in via New York and out via Vegas? Yes please, I can’t be bothered with thinking about all that.

See id find that pretty simple lol.

Doesn't everyone track their inbound flight these days?

I wouldn't dream of using an agent for a US trip, we've done many long road trips to the US, the only time we ever had a problem was when we booked a NY hotel though a Thomas Cook brochure, it was a long time ago. The hotel didn't provide what we'd booked and I literally walked round the following morning to find better! TC did refund the price we'd pre-paid. Even before easy access through the internet we didn't use agents.

It's more expensive. It depends on whether you want to use the service or not.

Depends
If we want a package holiday we use a local Agent. She is amazing and suggests places I never would have thought of. She also sorts everything out both before and during - I joke its like taking your Mum on holiday!
We went to Greece a few years ago and everyone else was panicking about checking in for return flights/when transfers were etc and she had already WA me all the info. We were also one of the few people who sailed through customs on another holiday while everyone queued for visas and tried to get the currency to pay etc as our lovely Agent has sorted it all out.
We pay brochure price or less too

Sometimes people think its worth it to make things easier. For example there's a lot of queries on here along the lines of 'we want a relaxing AI holiday, not particularly bothered as to where we go, but we'd like a 2 bedroom suite so we don't have to share with DC or sleep on a sofa bed'. Without spending ages trawling through the listing for every hotel, it's not always easy to find that level of detail. The TA can often help with that.

But YABU to use AI to draft that drivel to advertise your travel agency.

Voted YANBU because it’s like any service, pay a premium it if you want it. I personally prefer booking flight/transfer/hotel myself, but I choose to spend money on other things eg a cleaner to make my life easier

Fortunately I’ve never had a flight cancelled, I appreciate that would be very frustrating

People who had holidays booked through agents seemed to have a harder time during covid, but that was a unique situation I guess

Why were people panicking about checking in for return flights though? And it's easy enough to find out what to do regarding visa and currency.

This stuff is not difficult. Maybe I should be a travel agent but the id have to put up with the lazy or stupid as customers . I cba babysitting grown adults

As I said for complicated flight itenaries or difficult countries - China maybe- I can see the point but otherwise no

Looks like AI written advertisement. Reporting.

It depends. We used a specialist TA when we went to California 10 years ago.

I struggled because I was given vouchers for the hotels, and because the TA had booked the flights I couldn't log in myself to double check that veggie meals had been booked (and the airline denied that we had requested it for one flight).

I like to be in control and see things for myself in black and white!

No idea why but people were flapping around and we weren't. I could ahve found out all those things but she told me so I didn't have to. She was especially good during Covid when it all seemed to change by the hour and we saw people left at airports several times
I have no reason to make it up
I am perfectly capable of everything my Agent does and we often sort our own holidays out but on the occasions we decided not to it has worked very well and she has been great.
I hadn't used one for years but I met her through a shared hobby and she said next time we went on holiday give her a try, we did and it worked very well.
We usually go on holiday 4 or 5 times a year and we have used her 4 times in around 5 years

I've voted YANBU because each to their own!
I personally would never use one as it's so much cheaper to book it yourself, generally more flexible and I enjoy doing my own research and usually find out more than a TA could tell me.

I think they have their place though, especially for people who are not very confident, inexperienced or simply happy to pay for someone else to do it for them.

It's an extra service that you pay a premium for. I'm quite happy booking my own, I don't even book packages anymore. If you prefer the convenience and don't mind the extra cost I don't think anyone is or would begrudge you.

We actually don't pay any more and have saved money if its a package.
If I do it all myself with Air bnb or similar then we probably do save a bit

We have only been on holiday twice as its so expensive. But I did everything myself. It was cheaper and meant I could use the money we saved on other things.

But it's a service you either want and pay for or don't.