The benefits of using a travel agent
(part 2)
A lot of you make all of your travel arrangements, yourselves, these days, using online booking engines to purchase flight tickets and reserving tours on tour companies’ websites, but we wanted to hear from any of our subscribers who prefer to let a travel agent do the work or who have had a positive experience using one recently. We asked you to include the following details.
For a trip to what place(s) outside of the US that took place approximately when, what have you had a travel agent do for you? What have you found to be some of the particular benefits of using an agent? Did an agent arrange something that you may not have been able to do without expending a lot more time, money or effort? Did one come through for you recently when you were in a pinch or accomplish something that you could not have done otherwise? If there is a particular agency that you rely on or a certain agent whom you trust, tell us the agency’s or agent’s name and their contact information.
A number of responses were printed in last month’s issue. More appear below, and we’ll have more in the December issue. Subscribers are invited to write to Appreciating Travel Agents, c/o ITN, 2116 28th St., Sacramento, CA 95818, or email editor@intltravelnews.com. Include the address at which you receive ITN. Photos are welcome.
In April 2013 we arrived in Ft. Lauderdale to board a transatlantic cruise to Barcelona on the Celebrity Equinox. I couldn’t find my passport, and the ship sailed without us.
We made an appointment with the Miami Passport Agency, rented a car, drove to Miami and rented a hotel room. We were prepared to fly from Miami to New York to Lisbon, but, in our room, when I was able to completely empty my purse (aka the black hole), I found my passport!
I called our travel agent, Deena Sujanani of AAA Travel (1111 W. Alameda Ave., Burbank, CA 91506; 818/843-2833 [the national AAA Travel website is http://travel.aaa.com]). She was abtle to get us on the last seats on the first plane the next morning from Miami to Nassau, Bahamas, then she made arrangements with Celebrity Cruises for us to board the ship.
There were several military-style checkpoints at the port, all of which now had our names, and there was a person waiting on the ship who speeded up our boarding process, including briefing us on the required emergency drill.
Deena arranged this for us at 20 minutes before closing, while helping another client plan his honeymoon. My husband calls her our “secret weapon.” (P.S. My husband got the “Man of the Year” award from my friends for not getting mad at me.)
We started using AAA Travel when a friend of mine went to Europe and had some problem involving airlines. She made one phone call from Europe to her AAA travel agent in Burbank (a different agent than ours) and the problem was solved. We decided that that was what we wanted when we traveled.
On our 2012 trip to Switzerland and Germany, Deena made us aware of Avanti Destinations (111 SW Columbia St., Ste. 1200, Portland, OR 97201; 800/422-5053, www.avantidestinations.com), which simplified our independent travel plans. We also used Avanti in Spain to help us rent cars and book hotels and trains.
Jean Byers, Burbank, CA
My husband, R.C., and I were planning a fall 2012 trip to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and Fiji. Snorkeling was our primary objective. Specifically, we wanted to stay in places where we could snorkel multiple times per day without arranging for boat transportation each day. (We learned in 1989 that staying on an island at the reef does not necessarily mean you can snorkel there.)
Fortunately, we were introduced to Mary Daughton of Out of the Blue Travel (4206 Birdie Ct., Niwot, CO 80503; 303/249-2501, www.outofthebluetravel.net), who worked to respond to our wishes.
Mary suggested that we spend part of our time in each country actually staying on tour boats. Our 4-night trip out of Cairns, Australia, with Coral Princess Cruises was the highlight of this trip. The cruise took us to points beyond the reach of day boats, where the snorkeling was pristine.
On Fiji we didn’t want to spend our whole stay on a boat tour, so Mary discovered a resort (new to her) where we could be dropped off for the second half of our stay. Nanuya Island Resort met our specifications for being small, nontouristy, family run and convenient for snorkeling.
This trip was a scheduling nightmare, so I don’t know how we would have done it without Mary’s help. The boat trips both left on specific days of the week. We used some small-city airports in Australia where the flights were not available daily. We originally wanted to leave in mid-October, but we had to go a month earlier for all the pieces to fit together.
Mary provided us with a calendar with all the helpful little notes that are critical to a smooth trip — where to take a taxi versus an airport shuttle, where to expect a fixed price versus where to negotiate, when to pick up a meal or snack prior to departure, where to reconfirm, etc.
We took a “city break” in Sydney in the middle of the trip. She found us a fantastic B&B in an inner-city suburb, the Victoria Court Hotel, at a very reasonable price for Sydney (Feb. ’13, pg. 4). She also laid out a plan for taking the harbor cruise and the Opera House tour and booked a full-day Blue Mountain tour outside the city.
We couldn’t have been happier with the way this trip came together under Mary’s guidance.
Donna Pyle, Boulder, CO
Somewhat over 10 years ago our travel agent, Phil Bryant, arranged an extensive trip to Australia. Phil is an independent contractor with Allure Travel (4500 Cherry Creek South Dr., Ste. 300, Denver, CO 80246; 800/875-7655, www.alluretravel.com). Having been born in Australia, he knows the country well. It was a great trip.
Since that time, we have utilized his services frequently. Most recently, he was able to use frequent-flyer miles to obtain a free one-way trip to Europe when, initially, the airlines said none were available.
For me, the benefits of using a travel agent are that an agent can find information more quickly and efficiently than I can. A travel agent has access to resources and experiences that I do not have.
Robert Quillin, Centennial CO
My husband, John, and I have used the same travel agent, MaryAnn Woolway (11247 Monterey Ct., Cupertino, CA 95014; 408/961-9136), for over 25 years, mainly for cruising.
I am a frustrated travel agent and love to plan and price our trips; then I call MaryAnn to see if she can come up with a better deal. Most of the time, she does.
She has booked more than 25 cruises for us, the latest a 22-day transatlantic trip from Florida to Southampton, England, in April 2014. For this trip, I had MaryAnn call Princess Cruises to find out some details that I could not get over the phone, such as transfer costs, etc.
For a previous freighter cruise, the agent would not talk to me and said, “Let your travel agent earn her money.”
Having a travel agent to do battle for you in any kind of dispute with the cruise line is a great bit of security.
Phyllis Mueller, San Jose, CA
Travel agent Gina Ruggiero of Villa Vita International (Box 41335, Phoenix, AZ 85080; 866/590-8181, www.villavita.net) transforms a series of great experiences into a seamless journey of discovery. Gina ensures that we are immersed in both place and culture, and she does it by slipping her knowledge and wisdom into all the tiny junctures where, without her, we surely would flounder.
Here’s a simple example. In Tuscany in May 2012, my husband, Don, and I had one day at Lake Maggiore and wanted to stay a night on Isola dei Pescatori. Gina connected us and our luggage from the afternoon train to the front desk of the island’s most scenic hotel without skipping a beat. As arranged by her, a guide helped us from the train platform to the ferry dock to the skiff to the hotel gate, all while delighting us with local tales.
“How would we manage this without Gina?” is the question we asked ourselves throughout our 21 days in Tuscany. Whether we were engulfed in the Milan train station frenzy or exploring backstreets in Riomaggiore, the trace of Gina’s expertise appeared at every time-critical transfer. We always had the insider’s upper hand, we never wasted time making connections, and we experienced off-the-path Italy fluidly, stress-free.
By the way, for an upcoming trip to the Greek islands, Sicily and Paris, Gina located a sailboat-based tour of the particular Greek islands we want to see, arranged for hotels and tours on both sides of the island-hopping and found us transportation from Athens to Sicily. In Sicily, she found for us hotels and minimal-driving tours and an air schedule that gets us to Paris at the right time of day.
We are free to focus on what we shall experience instead of having to plan for every potential disaster or frustration. That heady sense of “being transported” is why we only travel if Gina has prepared the way.
Nancy L. Howe
Scottsdale, AZ
I am totally capable of planning and booking my own trips. I have the tools and the tricks. What I don’t have anymore are personal contacts and boots on the ground. I want to tell you about two trips that were planned with help from Annie of Freedom Tours, LLC (301 Jackson Place, Ste. 301, Alexandria, LA 71301; 877/960-2816, www.freedomtoursllc.com), whose client list is nationwide.
For a 2013 trip to Norway, I wanted to visit my relatives who still farm and raise sheep on the family homestead in the middle fjords between Oslo and Bergen.
My husband and I fight, terribly, while trying to drive in foreign countries, so we were hoping to take public transport. Alas, in Norway it’s not so straightforward. Any transport between point A and point B will likely involve a boat, a bus (it may be a school bus), a ferry (in some cases, the school bus rolls onto the ferry) and a train.
I was overwhelmed trying to manage this, myself, so I called Annie and — voilà! — everything was handled, including unexpected upgrades at hotels.
In one case, I just really, really wanted to be in a certain hotel near my relatives, and Annie’s people patiently called them in Norway every Monday morning for six weeks until they relented, even giving us the penthouse suite. I can’t promise that for you, but that’s one advantage of a travel agent.
For a trip to Morocco, Freedom Tours arranged a private English-speaking driver for two friends and me. It was the spring of 2011, when there were uprisings all around. Before we left the US, Annie talked with her Moroccan contacts about the situation and made sure we were well informed and wanted to go ahead with the trip.
Extraordinarily, while we were in Morocco, not only was there an al-Qaeda bombing in Marrakech, but a week later Bin Laden was killed. I heard from Freedom Tours consistently throughout the trip, and they were brilliantly proactive.
Being American in an Islamic country at that time made us slightly wary for our safety. This fear had been buttressed by everything we read in the American press. To our surprise and relief, quite the opposite was true. Moroccans immediately wanted to engage us in conversation, invited us to tea and, in general, vanquished all the political stereotypes we had.
One never knows what will happen on any given adventure, but, in this case, we all felt so lucky to be in Morocco at that time. Circumstances allowed us to make friends with so many different people whom, I’m sure, we never would have met otherwise.
This is the reason we travel: to gain a more intimate and thorough understanding of different people and cultures. At a time when we could have been quite nervous, the circumstance actually was a door to even deeper friendships and more revealing conversations than we normally would have had.
That being said, it was a great comfort to know we had a travel partner looking out for us vigilantly, Freedom Tours. I took Annie’s UNESCO tour to Vietnam, and it was flawless and wonderful as well.
Paulette Hurdlik
New Orleans, LA