Looking for a Travel Hacker VA (Virtual Assistant)
 

Basically, I'm looking to hire a travel VA for:

-Managing all travel awards/miles programs & using them intelligently (travel hacking, basically)
-Booking flight tickets
-Rescheduling / cancelling flights
-Arranging for cab services or rental car at destination
-Hotel/lodging/apartment reservations
-Planning and scheduling meetings at destination
-Sending timely travel plan reminders
-Doing this not just for me, but occasionally also for groups I am traveling with (i.e. when I take a half dozen athletes to a location for a training weekend).

Do you know of any websites or individuals who would offer these type of services?

Seems like you need a travel agent.

I haven't had any experience with websites providing that specific service, but there are many websites where you can post projects like this and have bidders place bids on your job.

Basically, you would post a description of the job that you needed done (like you already did here), and bidders would come and tell you how much they would charge you for doing that job and how long it would take. You would then talk to those bidders about your requirements and their know-how, then choose the best one. So it's like Ebay, except the person posting the job is the buyer.

The biggest such websites are Freelancer.com, eLance, and oDesk. I've used them all and they all work about the same. These days, people can do any job that can be completed in front of a computer. Pretty sweet!

Not just any travel agent but an awfully good one willing to give personalized and full service. AmEx CTS would probably come close or maybe an extremely respected higher end small company. Adding travel hacking to the combination is likely to be problematic as OP is asking for two very different skill sets and target clienteles. OP's business would need to be sufficient to warrant this.

AFAIK no travel agent will book cab (taxi) service, although they can set up car/limo service.

What does the "VA" in thread title mean? Virginia location? That further restricts the choices.

I think that by "VA" he means "Virtual Assistant." A personal assistant but one he might not work with in person.

I kind of like his insight in posting on FT though. What percentage of people browsing the other sites you mentioned will know the cancellation/refund policies for WX and MX, or the free rebidding strategy on Priceline? I don't know the going rate for services like this, but it's a bit more specialized than picking up someone's dry cleaning. One good "score" by booking a block of rooms on Hotwire can easily make up the difference between paying someone $15 an hour and paying them $35!

Yes, I meant VA = Virtual Assistant. So far, haven't found a great solution...

I have no personal experience, but perhaps this person comes close to offering the services you require?

Cranky Concierge

"We also offer custom Cranky Concierge programs for Small Businesses who want to take the worry out of travel for their road warriors."

This one really looks interesting, I mean even their "urgent support" and trip planning service, although their award redemption advice seems a bit unreasonable at $150 per flyer (I don't see how they can provide enough value for that kind of money when it comes to finding award flights).

I would really be interested in hearing from someone, a frequent flyer, who has already used their services: Do they offer any benefit for frequent flyers who have read up well on FT threads or are they just useful for the normal, helpless flyer / busy all-expenses-paid corporate flyer?

I mean, if they are clever and really good with the KVS Tool, connected to ExpertFlyer and whatnot, know the contents of all relevant FT forums by heart, can find cheap ex-EU trips in their sleep etc., that would be absolutely worth the cost if you are pressed for time and need to outsource to a real expert.

If they just look up flights on Itasoft, I can do that myself, even when it's urgent...

Anybody ever use them?

Hello there, I'm kind of curious if you've already found your VA. Because there are lots of reliable sites you can look for. You could try Twitter, Elance, oDesk or CraigsList.
But if you're willing to hire a full time Virtual assistant, I've hired mine from Staff.com. So far, I haven't had a problem with her. She is very competent and reliable. You might be interested on checking out their list of candidates. I hope it helps. :cool:

I would love to find one of these too. My full-time admin gets completely swamped with Travel stuff and I'm trying to get her onto more significant projects.

I'd be happy to split costs if you found someone. I don't need the calendaring services, though. Just the travel stuff.

Also interested in this as well. Does anyone know how much crankyconcierge costs?

I use three full time VA's all from odesk. For what it's worth, I've found that workers from the Philippines have been the most reliable and best english, in the 5+ years I've been using odesk, after going through workers in eastern europe, south america, and india.

In the hiring post you might mention you are looking for someone who has experience in the airline booking industry. VOIP makes it so simple these days.

I've also come across Zirtual. I think my son was considering using them. Not sure if he did.

i think flightfox.com is a similar service, but mostly focused on flight arrangements