I met the owner of Classic Travel when we were both staying at Mollies in Auckland, NZ. He explained some of the factors he had to deal with in setting up an online booking engine - pretty interesting stuff. You're not allowed to "post" Virtuoso rates on a website. So his website is set up to pull the Virtuoso rates from the hotels' own booking engines when you browse for those rates.

This is also why Classic Travel lists only 266 properties (out of more than 800) when you search for Virtuoso hotels. They can only sell those properties who have booking engines that interface with their own.


This is how Lorraine Travel (whatahotel.com) got in trouble with Virtuoso and lost its membership (it's now Signature). They were loading the Virtuoso rates onto their own website.


OP asked if there's any disadvantage using a booking engine over using a live Virtuoso TA. Their website can't follow up with a personal phone call or email to the hotel's Sales Manager with a request to VIP a guest, upgrade a client, or pass along any special requests. I don't know how you cancel a reservation from their website ... it must be possible!