Travel Agents: Still Worth Knowing

By David Armstrong, Aviation.com Columnist

posted: 03 April 2008 08:20 am ET

: San Francisco Bay Area journalist and frequent flier David Armstrong writes about business and leisure travel. He covers airlines and airports from a consumer's perspective, and writes about hotels, resorts, spas and travel destinations for a variety of media outlets. He was the aviation reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle for seven years and is a former arts critic and feature writer for the San Francisco Examiner.
: If you're planning a long trip, a luxury vacation (say, to Hawaii's Big Island) or special travel for an event such as a Hawaiian wedding, a travel agent can create an unforgettable, customized experience. It can also save you lots of planning time, and maybe even save you money. Credit: Hawaii's Big Island Visitors Bureau (BIVB)

You may have asked yourself why you would ever need a travel agent. This is the Internet age: You point and click and do it yourself. Travel agents belong back there in the planet’s past, like the dinosaurs.

Right. Except when they don’t.

Even now, when there is a wide array of travel tools available to consumers, a good travel agent can come in extremely handy in certain circumstances.

One such circumstance is when you have an especially complicated flight plan. For instance, when you’re going on a long trip, traveling through several countries, over a longish time — say, three weeks. You have perhaps a dozen flights to arrange, including connections — plus four or five hotels, a car rental or two, a city tour and transfers between airports and hotels.

In this circumstance, a travel agent can help, serving as a one-stop shop. Said agent probably works with all the major players — airline, hotels, car rental agency — and has more clout with them than you do; an agent has the power to drive business to vendors or steer it away. The agent may also know about an unpublicized deal; travel vendors sometimes push exclusive information to agents.

The travel agent does this kind of research and coordination every day, full time. You may well be able to do it all online, but you have to be prepared to spend the time.

A more-seamless, less stressful experience — and the time saved — may be worth spending the money to engage an agent.

Agents charge fees, of course. They still book half of all airplane tickets in the U.S. (down from 80 percent 10 years ago). Most U.S. airlines eliminated agents’ commissions on tickets after Sept. 11, 2001, so now you pay them. Overall fees vary according to how much time agents spend on your behalf, and how much you ask them to do beyond simply booking a ticket.

Which brings us to another circumstance when using an agent might be the way to go: When you are in search of a specialized experience, perhaps a luxury experience, and want it customized for you.

Say you want a Hawaiian wedding. Or you want to check out gay-and lesbian-friendly destinations. It’s entirely possible there is a brick-and-mortar travel agency near you that specializes in Hawaii, including beach weddings, or knows luxury resorts and courts the gay and lesbian traveler.

Paying a travel agent can be tricky. You might want to agree upfront to an hourly fee; some experts recommend $50 to $90 an hour. You can also ask the agent to rebate any commissions received from vendors directly to you, removing the temptation to book you with the vendor paying the most commission money; if an agent balks, you might want to shop around.

If you have a simple plan and you’re primed to jump on last-second, Internet-only airfare deals, you can travel for less than you’d spend with an agent. Otherwise, a travel agent can be the key to an exceptionally good travel experience.