Why use a travel agent?

[ellbell]

I'm just wondering why some people use travel agents. I have considered it but the perks or discounts are very rarely if ever anymore than what I could get booking direct and if I need to make changes I can do so when I need to and not have to wait to contact someone to do it for me.

Are others finding huge deals that I'm just not seeing?

 

[FigmentSpark]

People who don't have time to find the best deals or who don't know what they want for a vacation or who want someone else to stay on hold for bookings and changes will use a TA. Another feature is some TAs will give cash back or in-house deals on some trips, for example, cruising. Dreams Unlimited (who run this board) will give you On board credit based on the cost of your cruise. Costco Travel is another that will give you Costco cash cards for your booking. So it really depends on the vacation and the person's situation.

 

[KCMA]

Mostly savings, convenience and expertise I don't have.. but also price of mind everything is done by a professional and someone to contact at any point before and during our trips for any info we may need.. we use someone from Pure Magic Vactions who specialize in Disney vacations.. she is great!! .. we tell her what we want.. she books.. that includes dining reservations, fast passes special ticketed events.. she is also in the loop of all promotions and specials that come up before our trip and she will see if they apply and refund us any additional savings.. she also visits Disney multiple times a year and can give us first hand experiences and recommendations for everything Disney.

On that note we only use one for Disney trips.. I just find there is so much more to book and plan etc

 

[JenLovesMM]

For Disney world, I don't use a TA, I prefer having control over our whole reservation and being able to call and put in requests myself, etc. but I do have a lot of knowledge about Disney World. We did use a TA for our first Disney cruise this year though, and my main reason for that is there was an onboard discount through them that basically covered our tips for the cruise, I felt that was worth it.

 

[Blackadder337]

I used a travel agent mainly because of time. I had done a bulk of the planning but when the time came to commit, I just found that trying to keep on top of deals, promotions etc.. was more than I could handle. I'm not sure about all travel agents, but the local one I used had a "disney specialist". She sat with me and went through everything I had already come up with and took care of all of it. When the inevitable mind changing stage came up, she offered to make the changes for me, or let me do it myself. I ended up letting her change it for me. She called me periodically prior to my trip with other offers etc.. and ran the numbers for me to see if it made me change my mind about anything.

So at least in my case, my travel agent worked WITH and FOR me. There was never any sense of giving up or losing any control over our vacation.

However I have heard horror stories about some agents that basically hold your trip hostage until its fully paid etc.. But this was NOT the case for us.

I guess the thing about travel agents is that you need to ask them ahead of time what they will and wont / cant do for you. What they will and wont let you do once the process is started.

I hope that helps!

 

[isabellea]

I only used a TA twice for Disney. The first time was for a DCL cruise and I booked with Dreams Unlimited because they offered a nice onboard credit. The second time was with another Disney travel agency that offered a small extra saving over the one I had gotten directly from WDW for our room-only reservation at POR. Saved me 30$/night I think. If there hadn't been an additional saving I wouldn't have given my WDW reservation to a TA. For our DLR trip last week and our WDW trip in December 2018 I am taking care of all the planning and booking.

 

[starvenger]

I don’t use a TA to plan my vacations except for cruises. Reason being that the TA can add on things like extra OBC or a bottle of wine for your cruise.

 

[SG131]

I used it on the last trip and decided never again. I’m too much of a control freak! I guess it depends on the agent. When free dining came out she was at work early, but not 5am early which is when the offer came out. And she also had to look for all her customers not just us. This year I made my own reservation, got up a couple times at night and got free dining for myself within 20 min of it coming out and I got exactly what I wanted.

I learned way more about dining and fast passes from this board than from her. I booked my own dining and fast passes. My travel agent would’ve done them, but again she wouldn’t make them at 6am and 7am respectively. If I end up not getting what I want then Its my fault and I can’t say it’s because the travel agent took too long before she did it.

 

[KCMA]

I guess it all depends on the agent.. ours is up at the crack of dawn and all hours of the night when our window for fast passes/dining reservations comes up.. she's not a 9-5 travel agent

 

[fan1080]

We always use a TA, doesn't matter where we are going.

For Disney, I've had no issues booking FP+ or ADR's myself, booking the package through our TA. Our TA always matches any price I find online.

The main reason we use a TA is in the off-chance something was to go wrong during our vacation (flight cancellation, etc). TA will take care of it, and send us the new info. I have better things to do than waste valuable vacation time taking care of those issues.

Happy travels.

 

[fab1976]

I plan my own Disney Vacations but still use a TA to book. The way I see it, I’m helping someone make a living doing something they like and I’m not paying anything extra for it. If I booked straight with Disney no one is getting the commission and Disney is making even more money. I’ve use several over the years but have found an awesome Canadian owned and operated agency with avid Disney lovers as their agents, if we book a cash vacation again in the future we will book with them again. I also like having someone to bounce ideas off of and get recommendations from. I find if you ask an often asked question on the Dis you may get attitude back instead of help. An agent won’t do that!

 

[JustCallMeMommy]

Many people really hate the planning aspect of traveling. I can't tell you how many people I have talked to about Disney who think it is just too much work. Travel agents are perfect for those people.

For me, the only likely time I would use a travel agent would be a for a good on board credit for a cruise. I might also consider it for a trip to a country that was difficult to book along - like the information isn't readily available on the Internet.

 

[roxysmum123]

I use a TA for the room booking only because it kills me that Disney doesn't have a toll-free number for Canadians to call - any changes I need to make to my trip (which typically there are a few) my TA is the one that calls Disney and deals with being on hold and the expense of the call. 100% worth it for me.

 

[Frozen2014]

I like to book myself vs TA for Disney or cruuses. Mostly I like control over the booking. We did try one for our first Disney trip at my husband's friend's recommendation but it was a waste. First, I get vacation obsessed and am constantly on corresponding measage board all the time so am probably almost as knowledgeable as them. Also with our Disney booking , a room discount came up. But by the time we were able to get in touch with her, there were few rooms left and we had to change rooms (from lion king to cars room at art of animation). So was more of a bottleneck.
And with cruises I want to book my own shows and dinner times (if applicable for the ship) right when released. So no TA for us.

 

[Shanti]

I'm just wondering why some people use travel agents. I have considered it but the perks or discounts are very rarely if ever anymore than what I could get booking direct and if I need to make changes I can do so when I need to and not have to wait to contact someone to do it for me.

Are others finding huge deals that I'm just not seeing?

Yes, for WDW trips I use a travel egency that offers agency-exclusive deluxe resort discounts that are much better than what you can get directly through Disney. I still book all of my ADRs & FPs independently.

For cruises, I book independently & then transfer the booking to Costco to get a CostcoCash card worth about 8% of the cruise cost.

 

[kiford]

We always use a TA. I don't feel like parking on the phone to make reservations. My TA also knows the questions to ask, things to recommend and asks questions I didn't even think about. We also purchase travel insurance through our TA.

We are going to Italy in September and WDW in December this year. I went to my TA about booking the Disney trip only. We are going with Italy with friends and booking Airbnb for most of it so didn't need my TA for that. As we were discussing WDW, I mentioned that we were shortly going to be booking our flights for Italy (business class) and asked about cancel for any reason travel insurance just because I wasn't sure about our friends' commitment to the flight schedule and cities to fly in/out of. My TA told me that if I booked the flights through them instead of directly as we were planning to, they could provide the cancel for any reason option to our insurance for no additional cost and then she was able to put a hold on our selected flights for 48 hours while we made our final decision. That brief discussion saved me big time - the next day the flights went up over double in price but I was able to book it at the original price and get the insurance we wanted for no extra cost.

We'd had a placeholder on a DCL cruise which was going to expire because of the Italy trip (which pre-empted a semi-planned cruise at the same time) so she spent her time parked on the phone to get it refunded.

She is also our point of contact for any issues, questions, or problems we may have when travelling. She's also provided me with a number of ideas for other vacations that we're seriously considering and was also able to give me some information about train travel in Italy (she'd just done that and had videos to show me her experience). We don't get much in OBC for cruises or discounts any more through the agency, but what she does provide is as valuable IMO.

 

[isabellea]

I use a TA for the room booking only because it kills me that Disney doesn't have a toll-free number for Canadians to call - any changes I need to make to my trip (which typically there are a few) my TA is the one that calls Disney and deals with being on hold and the expense of the call. 100% worth it for me.

Just use Google Hangouts to call WDW or DLR for free!