Recently I had to arrange the flights for 2 people travelling from Europe to Australia and back, each in their own different itinerary. They were artists invited to an event I organized, with paid attendance, so this was high-stakes stuff. I did it all by myself, with OTAs, and it all went pretty well; but the planning was a massive time sink.
I plan to keep organizing events, and eventually things won't go well: some invited artist will miss a flight and everything else will need to be readjusted / salvaged, which would surely be a nightmare (if not impossible?) in OTA-mediated stuff. So I'm wondering how would things work if I did this through a TA (not Flight-Centre, that much I know
).
Cost is important of course (these events rarely make money), but it'd be even costlier to have to cancel the event or deal with a stranded artist, so I'm open to paying more to a TA that would give me some safety net / planning assistance. Plus, probably the TA could propose things about which I had no idea at the moment (like turning a roundtrip with stopovers into a RTW fare).
But I never did anything through TAs, so I'm a bit lost. Would TAs really be helpful for this kind of situation?
Or should I just buy non-cheapest-flights with some rescheduling flexibility?
Relatedly: I will be travelling soon to Europe for a few weeks, so I thought I could try arranging it through a TA as an experiment to see how it compares to my own organizing. A quick but realistic estimate through OTAs showed I could have the whole trip for about 11K AUD (2 people, 3 weeks, 3 countries). I tried firing an email to a local TA that had good reviews, giving details about key dates and locations and asking for a proposal, mentioning my price estimation. After about 1 day of no reply I wrote to another. And then another...
So I'm wondering, why no answers? Is giving my own price estimate maybe bad form? How do I engage a TA?
I plan to keep organizing events, and eventually things won't go well: some invited artist will miss a flight and everything else will need to be readjusted / salvaged, which would surely be a nightmare (if not impossible?) in OTA-mediated stuff. So I'm wondering how would things work if I did this through a TA (not Flight-Centre, that much I know
).Cost is important of course (these events rarely make money), but it'd be even costlier to have to cancel the event or deal with a stranded artist, so I'm open to paying more to a TA that would give me some safety net / planning assistance. Plus, probably the TA could propose things about which I had no idea at the moment (like turning a roundtrip with stopovers into a RTW fare).
But I never did anything through TAs, so I'm a bit lost. Would TAs really be helpful for this kind of situation?
Or should I just buy non-cheapest-flights with some rescheduling flexibility?
Relatedly: I will be travelling soon to Europe for a few weeks, so I thought I could try arranging it through a TA as an experiment to see how it compares to my own organizing. A quick but realistic estimate through OTAs showed I could have the whole trip for about 11K AUD (2 people, 3 weeks, 3 countries). I tried firing an email to a local TA that had good reviews, giving details about key dates and locations and asking for a proposal, mentioning my price estimation. After about 1 day of no reply I wrote to another. And then another...
So I'm wondering, why no answers? Is giving my own price estimate maybe bad form? How do I engage a TA?
