Booking Flights Using Travel Agents

[wowzz]

So as to avoid thread drift on another issue, I thought I would raise this question on a new thread.
Is there any advantage, in this electronic age, in using a travel agent rather than booking on line, either via the airline's own web-site, or through a booking site such as Expedia ?
Personally I cannot think of any advantages, but I stand to be corrected.

[radeng]

Our company system says we should use the travel agent. They charge more to book the flight than the airline does, so I don't use them (with travel dept blessing). In any case, our system now is that you have for the flight and claim, so the travel agent is no help. Additionally, they know very little - told me that I couldn't take a train from Stockholm to Copenhagen. They'd never heard of the bridge! Then they said it would take 24 hours with three changes. One 'phone call to Swedish railways and it was all booked, and all I had to do was pick up the ticket.

[Tarq57]

One advantage I can think of, is that if you have one or more connecting flights, and they are interlined, then if one of them is rescheduled, or canceled, or runs late, resulting in a missed connection, it is not the passengers' responsibility to pay for the resulting mess. At least inasmuch as a replacement booking on the next available flight is concerned. Maybe a hotel might be included in some cases, using some agents.

[Pohutu]

I occasionally book flights through a travel agent when I want to take advantage of their ability to 'hold' a booking for a few days, which you can't do if you're booking online direct with the airline. I can then use that time to organise a hire car, hotel, etc. Then, if by chance there are no hire cars available on my chosen travel date, I can still cancel or change the flight.

[PAXboy]

Since I tend to travel independently, on much less money than I used to(!), I search and book for exactly what I want. I know that, sometimes, this will cost me more than if I used an agent or travel web site [insert any of the many names here!] but I would not be able to get the travel agent to search to very low levels of detail that I sometimes want. Simple example, I might choose which flight on a particular day by the type of aircraft operating the route and so on. If you ask them for too much detail, too often, then they have to charge you more.

For some folks, they have the money but not the time to search and book their own trips. There will always be such and there will always be agents to handle them. However, I expect that they will increasingly be small companies or folks working form home to do the research - not the big plate glass shop in the High Street or shopping mall.

[muppetbum]

When booking international multiple leg flights for faculty and students ( minors) it is a lot easier to give the faculty in charge a printout from the travel agent and their contact number than try to sort out missed connections etc yourself .

Found that one out the hard way.

[Globaliser]

Personally I cannot think of any advantages, but I stand to be corrected.At least two more I can immediately think of:-

1. Complex itineraries, eg LHR-(QF)-SIN-(JL)-KUL-(SQ)-SIN-(QF)-LHR, which most online sites won't easily deliver. Ironically, one of the first real online booking sites, easySabre, was also the best in this respect; it was a more powerful website than anything readily available to the public now.

2. Tame consolidators who will reserve your itinerary on a net fare, but will hold off ticketing until the airline's ticketing deadline so you don't have to hand over any cash at all until that point (as well as retaining full flexibility to cancel for zero penalty until ticket issue).

[DeRodeKat]

I often have a situation when I have to use a travel agent. This happens when we go with children to their grandparent. Typically, I fly with the kids there and come back, while they stay with their grandparents. My wife would fly later to bring them back. Impossible to book via the Internet because a child's ticket is linked to the adult one; impossible to have different dates.

[mftx7jrn]

One of the snags with booking with a Travel Agent is that you cannot redeem some carrier's Air Miles for upgrades etc. This is the case with BA, where you have to book through their website or over the phone direct to redeem air miles for upgrades. This is a little frustrating when, for instance, your company contracts a travel agent to make all bookings for work travel and you then wish to upgrade using your miles. Not possible.

[Hartington]

Travel agents come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and they are by no means all equal. Agency owners and managers have taken advantage of computerisation to dumb down the staff they employ. The same is true of airlines; about a year ago I enquired of an airline what the cheapest fare was from A-B. Reservations couldn't tell me (previously they had always been able to). They could tell me the cheapest available fare if I gave them dates but THE cheapest fare on the route had to be dealt with by another group where the experts were.

A good agency will walk you through your plan and question why you want to do what you want to do so that they can suggest alternatives and tell you why they think the alternative may be better for you. Sometimes the alternative will be more expensive, other times they may be able to save you money because they have that intangible called expertise, other times the cost may be exactly the same but the routing might save time or allow more connection time or .......

A good agent will then be monitoring your reservation and ticketing to ensure that everything goes to plan and to help you should an unplanned change occur. But help isn't necessarily free.

[reynoldsno1]

Local travel agent in NZ has often said they will beat the online self-booking price ....

[zfw]

Travel agents for me now on long haul..........
Man-Tpa Tpa-Las Las-Man
For the Man-Tpa sector tried online via various carriers price came out at around £800-850 just for the flight.
Travel agents. All the above flights plus 10 days car hire, and 4 nights in the Luxor. £1045 incl taxes.

Long gone are the days of cheap flights from the airlines the greedy b"£$tards now charge top rate, travel agents are still able to negotiate and get bargains.

ZFW