TRAVEL TALK - - VOLUME 4 - - SPRING/SUMMER 2011 TRAVEL AGENTS ARE HOT! A recent episode of 30 rock has Liz Lemon desperate at the prospect of losing her job and she is invited to live in a subway tunnel with people whose occupations have become irrelevent including a travel agent. I love 30 Rock and this satire was pretty funny, but does not reflect the reality of the marketplace where agents still control about 50% of the travel sold in the USA to the tune of 100 billion a year. If you think an agent has buying power with vendors and can get you a deal, you are right! The prestigious Washington Post recently ran an article titled "Travelers Turn Back to Travel Agents" published on May 6. The story indicated that many vacations have become hard to plan on the web and circumstances like the Egypt Revolution and last summer's volcano meant that travel agents are in vogue again to handle people's plans. Travel Suppliers are also realizing that fewer travel agents still control approximately 50% of all travel sold, so they are making sure agents have the best prices and private specials they can offer their best customers. Forrester research indicated a 22% increase in the use of agents over the past year and most online booking sites have added travel agents to help with the process. Travel agents are especially important when dealing with complicated foreign independent travel, but cost the client nothing when you are booking an ocean cruise, a river cruise, most hotel rooms, vacation packages and all-inclusives or an escorted tour so why not have an advocate for free? That same study mentioned above also indicated that in 2007 53% of people "enjoyed" booking travel on the web but that number had dropped to 47% by 2010. Face it, websites have gotten trickier with added charges that seem to magically appear or as the post article said "a few hundred in taxes and fuel charges that show up on the last screen of an airline booking". There is one airline from St. Petersburg called Allegiant where an advertised $59 flight costs about $100 bucks by the time you get done. They have the most aggressive website in the business that keeps adding things back in every time you go to a new screen. Sooner or later, you will have to change your plans with those websites you booked and you will speak with an agent. When that happens, if you are booking online, you will probably speak with an agent in Philippines, India or Central America which will not provide you with the same level of understanding as a US based travel agency. The overseas customer service is so bad US Airways recently brought all call center activity back to the USA. Yes USAirways used overseas reservation centers until too many customers complained. In addition, when you book online you give people in other countries, access to your credit card information plus if you are going internationally, they have your passport number, expiration, birth date and home address which is a pretty good start on identity theft. Now that airlines have unbundled charges, a good travel agent can help compare additional charges plus we also find the most convenient routing, know what is enough minimum connect time so you are not running through airports. We also sell the same cities and products all the time so we are aware of special programs open to residents of a particular state or discounts for Senior Citizens, AARP, Past Guests, Military specials and other discount programs. Bottom line, we still provide customer support in a "do it yourself" world, we make the process enjoyable instead of a chore and most importantly, we make sure the job is done right. One of my greatest satisfactions as we grow this business is people are amazed that they get customer service and compliment us frequently. They all say the same thing, that they thought this level of customer service did not exist anymore! We are proud of the fact that we have evolved as travel has changed. We use some of the same sites that "do it yourselfers" use to get information, but we rarely book the product on those sites. As a travel agent, I am particularly addicted to Google Maps and Google Translate as I can now look down and see that tiny place you really want to go, plus I can converse with hotels or transporation people in any country. As one of Gina's Italian cousins says "Language it is such a problem", well no more since simple conversations can be translated on the fly. Some of my customers are out on a Transatlantic for a trip back to England where they were born. The question of how close the ship was to the train came up so we looked at Google Maps and it happened the ship was in port the day the satellite was taken and we could actually see the ship parked across the street from the train station. We also have many vendors and booking tools that are agent only, like Go Go Tours and Travelbound plus we pay to maintain a GDS (General Distribution System) or what we have called our airline computer for the last 25 years. The GDS gives us direct access to the inventory of airlines, cruise lines and hotels without the filter of middle man websites. We find that hotels dump into the GDS sometimes at the last minute as giving the best deals to travel agency clients quietly is better than degrading the average daily rate publicly on a big website. We have private agent only sites for the escorted tour companies and cruise lines that have promotions grouped so we can find you the best deal. With the public tools and agent only tools we use now, we are better at doing our job than any time in the last twenty years. As a tour operator my whole life, I find that I can put together custom itineraries easier and more sensible way plus we have our own system for building itineraries that can't be beat. The only place we charge fees is for airline tickets and we frequently earn our airline ticketing fee given the trouble that airlines sometimes cause travelers. A travel agent knows the rules when you have a problem. Did you know that the airline owes you a hotel if the plane breaks but not if a delay is weather related? They airlines will pretend they owe you nothing if they strand you at your fault so its good to have an agent when something goes wrong. The Washington Post article mentioned last year's volcano and we have had multiple interruptions in services from the wave of democracy going across the world and the natural weather problems that seemed to have spiked lately. If plans change, clients always realize the value of a travel agent as sometimes it is easy to book on the web but impossible to change a reservation. A travel agent along with a good travel insurance policy will make the trip a lot smoother.. We do also charge fees for FIT final itinerary planning or plan to go deposits on complicated point to point itineraries, currency conversions overseas, booking of b&bs or apartments, show or museum ticket requests but our customers that do complicated travel want everything taken care of prior to departure. We produce a quality itinerary and don't leave anything to chance. Vacation time is too valuable to have bad logistics. A travel agent can mean smooth sailing whether you are on land or sea plus we get you the best deal and tailor your vacation to your particular needs. We are your advocate and honestly help you pick through the information overload to find out what is true. |
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