I have an excellent travel agent too. The same one for 20+ years and I’m on the west coast and she’s on the east coast. I’ve been in a couple of dilemmas while traveling with no fault of ours (only the airlines; and that’s enough to deal with) and she and/or her team assisted us without us doing any of the work while traveling. I don’t go away to spend alot of money on a vacation to deal with aggravating issues from a cancelled flights or a delayed flight. I’ve spreads done alot of the work planning the trip.
Interesting! We don’t have Chase , use Amex Platinum and have never used an agent, we don’t know any
A Travel Agent doesn't cost you any money - they are paid by the tour/cruise company. A good travel agent will know quite a bit about travel and perhaps even the destination you're planning to visit - and will give you good advice. Travel agents are courted by travel companies. They may even receive free trips so that they can experience what their customers will encounter. As you can expect, the TAs are treated quite well on those "education" trips. They want the TA to recommend their trips.
Travel agents do not get any payment for making airline reservations. If you book a tour or cruise most TAs will make your airline arrangements as part of the deal. But if you call them to make an airline reservation not part of a tour/cruise, they will charge you to make the reservations. That's why Shawn Power will only make your cruise reservations - he won't do your airline reservations.
If you would like to try a travel agent, ask here on the forum for a reference to a TA and try him/her for one tour. It can offload you from a lot of searching and planning.
My travel agent knows what I like and when she makes reservations for me she takes care of those things. For example, I like a walk-in shower for a suite on a ship or hotel room, rather than a tub shower.
And when you have a problem on a cruise/tour, they can often solve the problem. They have phone numbers to people in various companies who can help. Numbers that you're unlikely to have or to be able to reach on short notice.
I understood all that, but the Amex platinum people can do all this for us. Not just travel. Some ,of the examples for us have been getting tickets for a hard to find tickets for a popular Broadway show., asking them to get reservations on a particular date when a booking periods opens for a top restaurant in New York City. And of course helping us with canceled flights. Tauck have been very difficult to contact a couple of times when flights booked by them have been canceled.
I don’t understand how a travel agent can be concerned when it is in the middle of the night US time when you need to urgently contact them.
Obviously we have all talked about this subject before, but it is interesting to see it come up frequently.
Has anyone who used to book themselves started to use a travel agent?
Comments
I have an excellent travel agent too. The same one for 20+ years and I’m on the west coast and she’s on the east coast. I’ve been in a couple of dilemmas while traveling with no fault of ours (only the airlines; and that’s enough to deal with) and she and/or her team assisted us without us doing any of the work while traveling. I don’t go away to spend alot of money on a vacation to deal with aggravating issues from a cancelled flights or a delayed flight. I’ve spreads done alot of the work planning the trip.
A Travel Agent doesn't cost you any money - they are paid by the tour/cruise company. A good travel agent will know quite a bit about travel and perhaps even the destination you're planning to visit - and will give you good advice. Travel agents are courted by travel companies. They may even receive free trips so that they can experience what their customers will encounter. As you can expect, the TAs are treated quite well on those "education" trips. They want the TA to recommend their trips.
Travel agents do not get any payment for making airline reservations. If you book a tour or cruise most TAs will make your airline arrangements as part of the deal. But if you call them to make an airline reservation not part of a tour/cruise, they will charge you to make the reservations. That's why Shawn Power will only make your cruise reservations - he won't do your airline reservations.
If you would like to try a travel agent, ask here on the forum for a reference to a TA and try him/her for one tour. It can offload you from a lot of searching and planning.
My travel agent knows what I like and when she makes reservations for me she takes care of those things. For example, I like a walk-in shower for a suite on a ship or hotel room, rather than a tub shower.
And when you have a problem on a cruise/tour, they can often solve the problem. They have phone numbers to people in various companies who can help. Numbers that you're unlikely to have or to be able to reach on short notice.
I understood all that, but the Amex platinum people can do all this for us. Not just travel. Some ,of the examples for us have been getting tickets for a hard to find tickets for a popular Broadway show., asking them to get reservations on a particular date when a booking periods opens for a top restaurant in New York City. And of course helping us with canceled flights. Tauck have been very difficult to contact a couple of times when flights booked by them have been canceled.
I don’t understand how a travel agent can be concerned when it is in the middle of the night US time when you need to urgently contact them.
Obviously we have all talked about this subject before, but it is interesting to see it come up frequently.
Has anyone who used to book themselves started to use a travel agent?