Working for my previous employer, I agree that the in house agencies are terrible in most cases when it comes to finding deals. The large companies do usually cut special deals that include rebates, discounts, and other goodies like upgrades that may (or may not) be passed on to the more frequent traveler, but to the more "senior" traveler.

My current company uses a local office of a big firm and I use them about 50% of the time - whenever there is more than one hotel involved or I need multiple vehicles, etc. It boils down to the time it takes to get price comparisons on hotels and so on vs. the on line bonus. FWIW - for international trips I ALWAYS use a TA and it has been worth it.

I only use a TA for a complex vacation involving many bookings with various agencies. If something goes wrong, I have someone else to blame. Seriously, I only have praise for the work of my TA...six major trips and delivered as scheduled and promised. A TA is a professional and there are certain trips that I leave to the pro.

This is old hat to a lot of you, but just a reminder that your agent may not have you foremost in his mind.

Agencies are encouraged to concentrate their sales with a few select suppliers. All manner of good things comes to those who achieve volume with a supplier. Commissions might start at 10% and escalate to 20%, more attractive free trips are offered, waivers and upgrades are more available and on and on. Agencies encourage agents to sell peferred suppliers through various incentives.

Agents are still fuming at Delta for initiating commission caps in 1995, not to mention AA's recent unforgivable sin. They'll take revenge on these airlines by directing sales away from them regardless of the consequences to the consumer.

A heavy hitter traveler and a heavy hitter agency can make music together if the agency is willing to share some of its benefits such as waivers and upgrades. The art is to find such an agency,

But, if with too credent ear you list his songs, you may end up a woodcock.


[This message has been edited by VicOsaki (edited 11-17-2001).]

Just like in any industry...there are good and bad.

Alot of travel agents are just order takers..and bad ones at that. They wont be around much longer!!

However, the ones that will be left will be invaluable.

In fact, many people who have tried the internet to book are now going back to their agents. It seems that the internet is not all that it is cracked up to be.

I use a travel agent: my wife!

I quit a couple of years ago when they charged me an extra $17 per ticket because the airlines had recently cut their commission. What really ticked me off was that if they had mentioned it beforehand, I would have booked through the airline.

I'm coming out: I am a travel agent. I used to be a full time salaried agent, now I just make commission

Here is what I can do for all of you for your travel:

1. I can research your fare. I can find out if we can get it cheaper booking it online, through Orbitz, or a consolidator. I'll always do *exactly* what you want me to do and keep your interests at hand.

2. I can call an airline and get a fare forced if it's sold out, most of the time. So you saw a fare $150 from LA to NY and now the availability is gone, but i can get you on American for the same fare... one call to United and *poof* there is the fare for the flight you wanted!

3. If something happens, I can void your ticket. Try having an airline do that!! Can't get your money back, more than likely.

4. FASTFARES! Something our agency offers (http://www.sunrise-travel.com). We periodically scan Worldspan for cheap or special airfares, such as $137 FLL-SEA, $75 PBI-LAX and mass email them the moment we find them. When was the last time AA, DL, TW, UA emailed you with THESE low airfares?!?! Other agencies are offering this service too!

5. Rebook help. Case in point: Father & step mom flew Chicago - Miami - San Pedro Sula - Roatan. Return got botched due to weather, had to stay the night in Roatan. Grupo Taca said they confirmed my parents on the Miami - Chicago flight, which was oversold and ZERO'd OUT in worldspan, but TA said "we have them confirmed". After 2 calls to their El Salvador office, the supervisor finally said "it came back unconfirmed, even though they still have seats open"... (which they didn't!). My father finally got back from Honduras 2 days later... if he had booked it through me, I could have fixed his routing, confirmed United, and got him home on Sunday instead of Monday.

I'm honest with everyone... if I feel my service fee $17.50 to $35 is steep, then I'll tell you to just book it online. but if you want to go to Europe, I'll do what I can to save you HUNDREDS, if not THOUSANDS of dollars on your airfare versus what you can do on your own.

We're a dying breed and some of the dumb agents who don't know what they're doing has given all of us a black eye. Some agents, including myself, know the games, know the rules, and we play it. I'm out here to protect YOU, as my client, and give you the best rate, best seat, best upgrade I can.

Here's a good way to look at it:
Does your stockbroker, realtor, doctor, or lawyer work for free for you? No... then why should I?

Nate

The CEO of Continetal airlines recently stated that the current model between the airlines and travel agents is broken and needs to be fixed. The reality is 9/11 showed that the airlines can't survive without travel agents and travel agents can't survive with little or zero commissions.

He is proposing that all airlines take commissions down to zero and the airlines would charge all customers buying tickets from the airlines a transaction fee of anywhere bewtween $20 and $50 per ticket. This would level the playing field, restore some revenue to the agency community and add some profit to the airlines.

Wow, thanks people, for your posts. Never thought this would be such a popular topic. Interesting range of comments.

While there are some good agents out there, far too many of them got into the jonb in the first place to travel themselves rather than to sell travel.

More often than not, I've found I know alot more about finding cheap fares than the agents.

A good example would be something as simple as flying between Anchorage and Miami, a route I travel at least three times a year.

Most Travel agents, when asked to fare this route, will punch in the fare request for ANC-MIA. The result can often be quite high as opposed to breaking the fare in SEA. To me, this would seem a natural progression after seeing the usually high fares on the route. Still, most agents just quote the fare and that's that.

I say, if they're doing their job and have some awareness of the industry, they'll check the ANC-SEA fares, which are always reasonable, and then check out the SEA-MIA fare. More often than not, by "breaking" the fare in SEA, you'll save a couple hundred dollars!

Also, it's worth checking FLL for those going into MIA. WN flies in there and the larger carriers usually match WN's low fares.

The traditional excuse for failure to do this is that there just isn't time.

Nonsense.

It takes mere seconds to type in the command, view the response, and if need be check another option. A couple to three minutes extra work could result in a very happy client. That's time well spent.

I know all this because I used to train those same agents on the airline computer systems. The systems are generally quite good but overall, they are only as good as the agent using them.

Since too many of these travel agents don't use these computer systems to their capabilities, I book all my own flights on my own.

Worth noting ~ the airline agents aren't always much better. Earlier this year, an agent manning United's Premier Reservations line repeatedly claimed that UA didn't fly to ANC. (UA offers year-round service to ANC and has since 1984) Even when I gave her the flight's number and departure time, she had difficulty pulling it up. When she finally found it, it was wide open, as was her mouth I should imagine.

The other great reason to plan my own travel is that the airlines make it worth your while via the mileage incentives offered to book directly on their web-sites.

This is exactly the question to ask, though it does not necessarily favor agents/advisors.

Some people can do a better job (or at least believe they can) than an advisor. For example, selling a house themselves or using index funds instead of brokers.

Years ago agents were invaluable. A consumer couldn't quickly find the prices every airline was offering to a destination. Today, that process takes only 30 seconds. If agents offered a distinct advantage over the web more people would use them. But for point-to-point U.S. trips, the web is sufficient, and provides bonus miles.

For complex overseas travel or cruises, however, an agent's knowledge is probably more in demand.

Seat 2A->

here's what I'd do.... you call in, give me your dates, I'd tell you "Mr. Seat 2A, the Published rates are gonna cost you 2 years of college tuition. but I have a few tricks up my sleeve that could probably take it down to a semester... would you mind letting me work on this a bit?"

With luck, I'd find a consolidator that offers you frequent flyer miles and some liberal change penalties for a fare that is 20 to 80% cheaper than what you want.

We use DER Travel frequently for last minute trips, and I've saved one client over $50,000 in travel (we made a chart for him) while we would take in a 100% profit on the tickets. Luckily DER offers fares based on class of service that only require ticketing 3 days prior, so you can call United or American and find your fare at $6,000 but I can get it for $950.

((FYI: you have to use an agent to get a ticket via DER))

skofarrell -
Please advise how a good travel agent can save you on a cruise.
Thanks.

Here's a list

1. Access to consortia group space. Normally it's $100 to $500 off the cruise only price.

2. Upgrades are available through consortia

3. $$'s off

4. Resident specials only offered for sale via travel agents

To UA Premier Exec~

Thanks for the information. It's much appreciated by all of us, I'm sure!