I've been approached by travel agents after posting about my travels on various sites (mainly by agents booking with Virtuoso). We'd be open to using a travel agent if the price and other benefits made sense. Unfortunately, in the case of Virtuoso as an example, the offerings in our primarily international travel destination (Taipei) are less numerous than FHR, and doesn't include one of the properties we split time between (when I last checked last year, Virtuoso also had only two properties in Taipei, though now there are 4). And then Virtuoso doesn't guarantee 4PM late checkout as a right, though to be fair apparently some properties will provide Virtuoso bookings with a guarantee of 4PM checkout at the time of booking (I've heard of mixed results on this), which is a pretty big downside for our travels. And this is before getting into the travel credit with the Amex Platinum Card.

Our secondary travel destination is Japan. But we have other credit cards that make booking via benefits associated with those cards more of a no brainer than booking with Virtuoso. Specifically, we have numerous Hilton Aspire Cards. We plan to stay two nights at the Conrad Osaka. Total per night (after taxes and fees) on Virtuoso for the nights we're looking is $978. With the FNC, the comparison is paying $550 for the card annual fee (which can effectively be significantly less if you got a bonus and/or are able to make use of the card's credits), which is a big discount.

Still, for those who services like Virtuoso work for, I say great. Competition in this regard is a good thing.