Travel Agents vs. Travel Apps

The internet has made our world more connected than ever. From paying our bills to buying new clothes, everything can be done with just a click of a mouse. Travel has been no exception, as now more and more people opt for booking their flight and hotels themselves online versus through an agency.

A recent article in Forbes Magazine shed some light on why a website will never replace years of expertise by industry professionals. We couldn't agree more.

Why I Happily Waste Money On A Travel Agent (Maybe You Should, Too) 
From Micah Solomon, Contributor to Forbes

I fly an awful lot.

(And let me tell you, folks, my arms get very tired.) Arm fatigue notwithstanding, here’s my deal. I work as a keynote speaker and consultant on customer service/customer experience/hospitality/marketing. This means I’m professionally valued only when I get my buns out of the office chair and onto an airplane, to deliver my message on in person.

To increase the logistical challenge, the events I speak to are geographically scattered — it seems like each banking industry, healthcare, automotive, retail, financial services, insurance, B2B, food service, and so forth audience is a daunting and precisely equal distance from the next, all over the U.S., Europe, Asia, the Mideast, Africa. (Nothing in Antarctica yet, and, to my Hobbit-loving kids’ chagrin, nothing in New Zealand or Australia yet either).

I’m not, even for a moment, complaining (except about the lack of New Zealand events. And that complaint was inserted by my daughter.) There are people who travel even more than me, for less enjoyable reasons. It would be hard for me to love my job more than I do. I do, however, hate making travel arrangements. I know there are people who enjoy putting together the jigsaw puzzle of a travel itinerary. (In fact, a recent study of the Millennial generation of customers found that people of all ages spend an astounding average of 42 hours online checking out and presumably daydreaming over future travel before booking a trip. If you’re one of these folks and this works for you, good on ya.) But my actual job is putting together the jigsaw puzzle of a speech, a book, a seminar. Which I enjoy more than I enjoy fiddling around online with travel.

Nonetheless, for too long I fell into the trap of thinking that self-service was the only reasonable option now that the traditional, commission-based travel agency model has fallen apart, and now that self-booking online had become so much easier than it used to be. But just because you can do something yourself doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

Lisa Timmons (my travel agent at United Nations Travel) has something I think of as tradeskill. A nuanced and honed-over-the-decades vision of when it’s safe to wait to book a ticket, when waiting isn’t a risk worth taking, which airline connections are tighter than they would appear, and so forth. I am assuredly getting my fee’s worth per flight, a fee I happily pay now that we’re in the post-commission era in travel.

In our transparent world of travel these days, you can be a partner with your travel agent in a way you couldn’t be in the past. You can give apps such as Kayak a once-over and ensure your agent didn’t miss anything. You can challenge judgment calls she makes, and get her to prove her point better than the old “trust me, everything’s opaque” days. But your travel agent will always know stuff you’ll (or at least I’ll) never know. At least that I’ll never know without wasting too much time on learning it.

There are things I know better about my travel preferences than Lisa does, of course. There are times I want to fly a particular airline so I can specifically review its customer service. Or maybe I just know I’ll be out late with friends next Thursday night and will never in a million years get over the Friday morning deathlike feeling quickly enough to get on a morning flight. And of course only I can know how worn out I’m feeling and therefore how unwilling or willing I am this week to even consider squeezing into a center seat.

Working with a travel agent isn’t nirvana, it’s a partnership. Which, I think, is better than just poking around on an app.

So what do you think? Tweet us @odysseytraveler or post on our Facebook page and tell us why or why not you book with an agency!

The Danube Waltz by John Upchurch

We had a large group of 34 people traveling together for Gary Croty's 50th birthday. This amazing journey down the Danube started in Budapest traveling down the Danube River and ended in Passau, Germany. Budapest is an amazing combination of two cities with a viberant zest for life. To get a great understanding of the city we rented bikes for the day and toured the city and its beautiful parks. The visit however would not be complete without a stop in the famous baths. The next day after a full day of touring and eating Hungarian food we started the Riverboat crusie down the Danube in the ealry evening on the Viking Ledgend. I did not know what to expect with the stop in the Slovakian Capital of Bratislava, however this is a modern city with very friendly people. Again to explore I rented a bike for the day and rode the bike paths around the city and down along the river to Delvin. The highlight of the cruise was Vienna. The city itself is beautiful and full of history. We had the special experience of celebrating Gary's 50th birthday at Palace Auersperg. We started with champange in the courtyard under a perfect blue sky. We then prceeeded to be served a wonderful 4 course dinner all the while 6 musicians played classic music by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. The highlight was the lead violinist playing a stratavarious violin, while several opera singers performed for our small group. After the fun had ended we boarded the ship and continued on down the Danube. The next morning we stopped in Durnstein, Austria and 20 members of our group joined me for a twenty mile bike ride from Durnstein, Austria to Melk, Austria. Along the way we stopped and enjoyed the local culture like the wonderful beer. We were determined to taste all the beer flavors along the way. We also enjoyed riding through all the small towns and villages along the way. We ended our journey in Passau, which is a picturesque village in southern Germany. Then we boarded a motorcoach for the journey to Munich. The last party to celebrate our buddy turning 50 was one last night of beer drinking at the Hofbrauhaus. Several of us dressed for the occassion and ended up joining the band onstage for a couple of pictures.