Hello to all.... I need to plan a 15-20 day trip to Egypt and Greece. This trip will be for 3 couples, and since Im the FTer of the group Ive been named planner in chief. While Im not a fan of tour packages, the other 2 couples in my party are not very experienced travellers and are not as flexible in budget terms as I am, so planning a trip the Gaucho way will not be an option. Therefore my request for help.

We will be flying from EZE to a major European hub airport and wish to contract a package tour from Europe to cover Egypt and Greece. We are looking for something that is not super luxury, but still has only 4 and 5 star hotels.

We will choose the European hub to fly to depending on my advice on the best tour operator, but the options that Ive thrown out are: FRA, LHR, and CDG, as I think that those three central european cities have the largest volume of pax and tourists that feed through to Cairo and Athens.... (please correct me if Im wrong here).

I dont know if a Tour operator is a good choice for a 4-5 star level trip, maybe we are better off working with a travel agent...? What do you guys think? My worry is that one of these large operators will have better prices as long as we dont change one single option in their packages, or...? Maybe in the long run we will save $$$ and get a better deal going through a TA?

BTW, I dont want to use a EZE based TA since I think we can all fly from EZE to Europe on mileage awards and then contract the packages ex-Europe, where Im assuming that the costs will be different.