At first glance it might seem to you that a travel agent is just an added expense for your vacation. Why pay someone else to help you plan and book your vacation? Wouldn’t it be more cost effective to just do those things yourself and spend the money on something more fun?
This do it yourself spirit is commendable, but as with many do it yourself projects it often turns out that better outcomes can be achieved at a lower price when you let the professionals do it. Turns out, just like in many industries, there are tricks of the trade within the travel industry, and you won’t be able to take advantage of savings and hacks that your travel agent will be able to access.
And unlike the old days when someone had to go to a travel agent’s office in order to arrange their vacations, there are now online travel agents who have used technology to streamline every step of the process, making it easier and more affordable than ever to obtain their services.
If you are planning the trip of a lifetime and want to get as much adventure as your savings can buy, book with an online travel agent and enjoy the benefits of their experience in all aspects of booking and negotiating vacation packages.
Your Online Travel Agent Can Create Lower Cost Vacation Packages
World travel is a huge industry, employing millions and providing the majority of the revenue in many economies. As such, a good travel agency has a surprising amount of pull. An agency can create relationships with airlines, resorts, hotels and even rental car companies. They will also know trade secrets that can save hundreds on bookings for your trip.
When you use highly recommended travel agencies to plan and book your vacation package, you will find that the overall cost of the trip comes out lower than it would have been if you had done it yourself. Here are some insights into how they work their magic.
Travel Industry Secrets: Ways to Book at a Lower Cost
Travel agencies cultivate mutually beneficial relationships in other parts of the industry, and often are able to take advantage of the best rates available–deals that you wouldn’t be able to take advantage of as an average consumer.
Because of the volume of trips that they book, a travel agency is able to take advantage of discounts and deals that aren’t widely publicized.
When and Where to Get the Best Hotel Deals
Travel agencies form relationships with many hotels in the areas where they work, which leads to them having a familiarity with these hotels’ annual rhythms of business. The result is that they know when to book your stay if your goal is to get the best rate, allowing the hotel to stay more full and you to pay a lower price.
If You Fail to Plan, You Plan to Fail: Let Your Travel Agent Help You Prepare For Your Vacation
A big part of the point of a vacation is to get away from stress and structure, let yourself breathe and relax. Unfortunately, an unstructured and unplanned vacation often turns out to be more stressful than just staying at work.
There’s nothing relaxing about missed flights, scuba excursions that were supposed to be booked but never got finalized, or arriving at a hotel only to find it totally booked.
And what happens if you decide you want to go to a car rental for transport to various trending destinations in the area, only to find that the rental agency that was supposed to be in the area actually closed two years ago?
All these difficulties are preventable. With good planning from a travel agency you can get the most out of your vacation, in all these areas–and save money while doing it.
Coordinating Hotels with Car Rentals
When your agent books your hotel stay, they will have a folder of local resources at their disposal. They can make sure that when your flight lands there is a rental car waiting for you to drive to your hotel, which in turn will have a room with your name on it. If you want your trip to go smoothly, and all the necessary arrangements to occur in a timely manner, book with a travel agency.
These details seem trivial but when you are booking by yourself some things tend to fall by the wayside and be left to chance. Sometimes this works out just fine… and sometimes it leads to your planned getaway becoming a time of frustration and angst as you end up sitting in a hotel with nothing to do because the activities you planned turned out to be unavailable.
Make sure your itinerary is coordinated properly, with all necessary travel arrangements accounted for, by hiring travel agents to handle the details on your behalf.
Logistics: Don’t be Caught Without the Bare Necessities
Your travel agents will know exactly how to ensure that you have what you need for your vacation to go off without a hitch.
Will the country you are traveling to require vaccinations? Is your passport up to date? How about travel insurance, currency exchange and other monetary concerns? Your vacation is supposed to be a rest from your day to day complications, but travel prep can be anything but restful.
How Travel Agents Can Help
Let your travel agents walk you through their checklist, making everything as painless as possible. They can advise you on what you need to bring, make sure you will have the resources you need in order to fully enjoy your stay, arrange day trips and rental cars–in short, they will be your travel consultant and meet all your travel needs.
Cancelled Flights And Other Mishaps: How Travel Agents can Save Your Vacation
Imagine that you have booked a whirlwind European tour, intending to tour three cities in France and two in Italy in a matter of two weeks. Paris and Toulouse go off without a hitch, but when you arrive at the airport for your flight to Arles, you find out that your flight was cancelled.
Now what do you do? Prepare to spend the next hour at least fighting with customer service representatives, trying to find another flight as soon as possible. The next flight isn’t until tomorrow morning, so you then have to call the hotel to change your reservation, and figure out something to do for the day in the mean time–not to mention find somewhere to stay the night because of course the hotel you just checked out of is full.
What a nightmare.
Disasters Hit Different When a Travel Agency Does Your Legwork
Let’s change the scenario a bit.
If you have a travel agent, odds are that you will hear about your cancelled flight before you reach the airport–and when you get this bad news, you will also get the news that a new flight has already been arranged, possibly even on the same day, because travel agents are awesome like that.
Since you now have a few extra hours to kill, they will also have suggestions for easy excursions that you can take while you wait.
And if you do end up having to change your hotel booking as a result of the cancelled flight, the agency can handle the phone calls, allowing you to enjoy your extra time soaking up European architecture before they finally let you know your new itinerary.
Online Travel Agents Save You More
Planning your vacation is fun. Maybe you’re enjoying poking around on google maps and instagram, finding great resorts and select hotels for your next trip.
The trouble with trying to do all the work for your vacation yourself is that you won’t know what aspects of the journey you have not planned for until you are in the middle of trouble.
Hire an Agent And Let Them Do the Work
So instead of trying to schedule everything yourself, why not hire an agent to help you plan? Using a chat window you can show them all your hopes and dreams for your trip: castle tours, seaside rooms, fine dining. You can then get their expert advice on budget, and let them do the work of booking and finalizing all the details of your stay.
Using travel agents ensures that you won’t waste your valuable vacation time by missing out on opportunities for enrichment and relaxation. Search through available travel agents and book today.
