Beware of Travel Agent Traps and Properties Allegedly booked out

[dalereardon]

Hi,

I'm writing this post for the benefit of newcomers and people who think it is still a good idea to use travel agents, particularly the chain brand ones. I haven't fallen prey myself as I owned several accommodation properties for years and know the industry however have just had a relative go through the experience of using a chain travel agent when I recommended against it and got wrong information.

The first thing to note is that travel agents, particularly chain groups, only work through certain travel wholesalers and do not book direct with accommodation properties - I guess this also occurs with airlines but I didn't own an airline sorry!

Most properties give a certain allocation of rooms to certain wholesalers and some properties unfortunately do not update inventory across different sale wholesalers. This means that when your travel agent tells you that the property is fully booked / unavailable / this is the best rate etc it is most likely not the case. My relative was told the Hiltons and Sky City were fully booked in Darwin. A quick search of an Expedia based site soon revealed this was completely incorrect and better prices could be obtained by searching across the internet. Unfortunately my relative believed the nice lovely agent and paid a deposit and now has to move properties part way through her stay - hardly the best outcome.

The other "trick" the agent pulled was to make all accommodation bookings flights non cancellable and non refundable. Sometimes you can get a better price by making your booking non changeable but this is the exception rather than the rule. My relative did take out travel insurance but travel insurance doesn't cover all circumstances so it is sometimes better to have fully refundable accommodation bookings. In this case expedia was again offering bookings at the same price but fully refundable so the only person to benefit from making the booking non changeable was the agent. It just made sure she wouldn't lose her commission.

I have seen the same happen with air flights - the agent tells you the flight is full etc - check direct with the airline and you may well find a free seat.

Now I know there are some good honest agents out there but really you should check to see if you are truly getting a good deal before you take the agents word as the full story. It normally just means their easy to use sales channels are sold out and you can still book direct or through online channels.

Hope this helps others out by checking more broadly.

Dale.

 

[Quickstatus]

1st example. July 2000. Booked SYD-CDG via TA. TA said unable to book accom in Paris in area where we wanted (Lbank) = sold out!. . Went home looked up accom Paris on internet. Discussed with proprietor room types via email. Booked. No probs when we got there. Secured booking with CC. Best part was we did not have to pay until checkout. Note TA wants payment now and booking generally nonrefundable.

2nd example. SYD-LAX disneyland package via TA. Said we can buy DLand tickets and avoid queue. We got "tickets" all right- these were vouchers from wholesalers that you got to queue up to redeem into actual tickets. But we paid for them months in advance. Could have paid for them online closer to date. Also realised when we got there that DLand accomodation options a lot greater than what TA offering and closer than what we got..

Don't see benefit of TA for hotels/accomodation. I don't do hotel accom via TA or third party. You buy thru TA who buys from wholesaler etc etc and all u get us "run of house" stuff. I book with actual service provider only and only pay on checkout unless its Internet special in which case its upfront with no third party in the way.

I don't do packages either. These are generally designed to get maximum people thru at the cheapest price.
The trip to Paris included a tour around some sights in Paris. We ran out of time so guide said we had 20 min to see Notre Dane. You are at mercy of other travellers in the same tour.

Good example of self booking direct with providers:
2012 Syd-lax-mco//mco-yyc-lax-Syd. Booked accom 1.1km from Disneyworld. 2 bedroom fully equipped condo ,gated community. 8 night on either side of Christmas. = $800 all up. Flights booked online. No prob. Accom in Calgary very nice $80 per night for condo not per person. 3bedroom exactly where we wanted.

Sometimes TA better for flights. When I use TA for tricky itineraries I always tell TA that I want all conditions spelt out in writing/email including change fees. If they balk at that I go elsewhere. Even then I find I can get pretty much the same price and use credit card generally without fees which is important.

Essentially when you go to TA they will give u cheapest which is what people want without telling you what the downsides are.

Why do you think that TA selling and hyping upJapan as the greatest place to go skiing. 10 years ago it was Whistler. Because now if you want to go to Whistler you can book accom direct and get better service. Japan is still a mystery for some so they go to TA.

 

[eastwest101]

Fairly good advice from dalereardon in the OP - in the future I will construct an itinerary of flights and accom (and put a price together) and then ask a Travel Agent to try and book the following flights and accom at the following hotels, would be interesting experiment to do to see if there is any price differences and or different conditions between their own online booking and a TA. I would imagine that sometimes the TA may get a lower price and better conditions but maybe not often.

Why do you think that TA selling and hyping upJapan as the greatest place to go skiing. 10 years ago it was Whistler. Because now if you want to go to Whistler you can book accom direct and get better service. Japan is still a mystery for some so they go to TA.

Fortunately I had a native Japanese person to arrange our little skiing sojourn in Japan so in that case was happy not to be my own travel agent as it was arranged from a Japanese web site but in most cases where I have been my own travel agent I have been pretty happy with the outcome...

 

[drron]

Even with the chain agents it is not always bad.Late 90s went to a conference in Anaheim.Conference hotel was the Hilton.Through the conference it was booked out.Through Hilton it was booked out.But our local flight centre agent(who we knew well) got us a room at $A150 a night when the conference rate had been $US400 a night.At checkin the agent was astounded at the price we were paying several times asking just how did we get that rate.Walkin then was $US1500 a night.

I can assure you though that TAs have many stories about how stupid some pax are that do things for themselves and then want a TA to fix it for them.
Disclaimer-my neice is a TA and we always use a TA for our travel apart from hotels because she will proactively fix things if the proverbial hits the fans.

Also remember that the ordinary pax does not have the same knowledge as those on AFF and even we make mistakes!

 

[Quickstatus]

Disclaimer-my neice is a TA and we always use a TA for our travel apart from hotels because she will proactively fix things if the proverbial hits the fans.

Also remember that the ordinary pax does not have the same knowledge as those on AFF and even we make mistakes!

Lucky you got a niece who is TA. Usually TA are only open 8 hrs a day, and when travelling it is likely that when you run into problems their office is closed. Im not suggesting that TA should be open or accessible 24 hrs. When the person you dealt with is only accessible for 33% of a day, I would rather deal with the actual service provider-airline/hotel and my interaction with them always occurs when they are open.

i remember one time years ago I had a hotel booking via TA in Nice. When i got there i found out the booking was for a week later. TA closed, so had to sort out issue myself. Not sure what the TA could have done anyway.

TA exist and make money because they have access to proprietary software and systems not available to general public. Dr Google has levelled the playing field somewhat.

My most recent TA test was a dummy request to book F9 (Frontier airlines - the planes with pictures of different animals on its tails). LAX-DEN. Never flown them before so wanted to see what TA could do re price. TA said yes they can book but I found out the ticket would have been issued by Hahn air (german airline) as the wholesaler has relationship with Hahn air and F9 did not have office itself or via affiliate in Australia. TA Price better than website but conditions very bad including no luggage or seat selection. If i wanted checked luggage then TA price worse than website price. When i found all this out I did not go through with it. I just went onlline and booked with aussie credit card. Self =Easy, TA=Complicated.

With travel I try never to buy a product from provider A but sold by provider b or c. Especially if provider A consigns it to provider b who sells it to provider C then sold to punters like me. Along the way conditions tend to get more restrictive and ticket is clipped one or more times, so when i redeem the product with provider A, i have no relationship with them to leverage incase of problems, and repeat business. I prefer to buy a provider A product from provider A.

 

[Isochronous]

I'm still trying to understand how FC HK undercut QF on a HKG-MEL PE fare by about $200.

 

[drron]

Quickstatus we don't use our neice as a TA.She is now GM of a large group.
Our TA true is only open 8 hours a day but we communicate by email.They go out of their way in service eg delivering documents to our home personally on weekends.The team is worth the commissions we pay them.

 

[Jeffrey O'Neill]

I don't do packages either. These are generally designed to get maximum people thru at the cheapest price.
The trip to Paris included a tour around some sights in Paris. We ran out of time so guide said we had 20 min to see Notre Dane. You are at mercy of other travellers in the same tour.

My experience with a package from Expedia was quite good in that I was able to do LHR TXL return and 7 nights at the Mercure Mitte Berlin for $869 all up. I couldn't get the hotel for that price.

I do prefer booking my own travel needs though. At the end of the day when the $$ are coming out of your own wallet you'll generally try a bit harder to save some.

 

[shearsense]

I too have had some terrible experiences with TA's and generally do my own legwork now. However, I would also say that over the years I have stumbled across a small number of TA's who really, really knew their stuff and I stuck with them as long as I could before they changed jobs or moved on away from my home base. Incredibly, one of them was even with a well know travel group that seem to attract a significant amount of criticism on these boards. In most cases, these were guys or gals who realised I knew a fair bit about travel, booking systems, ticketing etc and communicated with me at a similar level of "sophistication". They also were prepared to listen to my own tips, particularly with regard to non-preferred accommodation suppliers. While only available a portion of the day, if there were any problems they often set the ball rolling across time zones to solve the issues by the time they were back in the office the following morning. I was also often not in a position to easily solve the problem myself because I was already on the road experiencing sporadic communications and so a problem was solved by the TA by the time I landed off a long-haul flight.

In my view, while they are hard to find, if you do find a good TA they are worth their weight in gold so stick with them and send them a reasonable amount of business to maintain the relationship. I suspect the TA's who post on AFF are among the good ones (if they weren't genuinely interested in the subject matter, why would they bother?). I have no vested interest or bias towards any of them in particular though - just calling it how I see it.

 

[Sdtravel]

Yeh some agents are only interested in making their commission.
booked a family trip (well relative booked it) with some Wyndham travel group they are members of.
Was SYD - HNL. The price for the ticket on qantas they wanted to charge was $100 more expensive then on qantas website. Called them and said qantas website is cheaper. Can you match it ? She was like sorry no it's our set price and I can't change it it's the whole sale price we get from supplier we don't make profit from it. So I said I would book the flights ourselves if they didn't match it. I know they get the fairs at a discount to what is advertised on qantas.com so they were definitely gouging. Also had to get extra travel insurance as I have a medical condition. Gave the agent the cover more reference they called and said it would be an additional $18. I said covermore site only said $12. She then said ok $12. Pure gouging!!

making things worse was that we booked cruises too. They didn't process them together so even though we had paid them they didn't pay carnival yet. 3 months out went to select shore excursions and was only able to on one booking. ( as two rooms was 2 bookings). Called the us cruise line who advised we had only paid for one room so this is why. Called the agent who said they for some reason put the payments in different batches and only make payments every month or so. I was like we booked and paid you 8-9 months ago. Was so pissed at Wyndham. Still don't like them.

I have helped do a financial audit in my last job of Stella group a large travel group which own heaps of travel agents ect. So I have seen the markups and margins. Charged someone $2000 for booking calcellation. Stella didn't actually book anything yet so was pure profit.

I know some agents are good others are terrible. It always pays to research first and get the to match the prices you find. Also they can modify the margins on their screens so it appears they aren't making much. So don't be fouled by them turning the screen and showing you it thinking you are getting a great deal.

Example of a sort of good deal. Booked SYD - JFK in June. Was a qantas Y+ sale. Had researched it prior and spoken to the agent who advised they would give me a good deal just come in when ready. Friend went to the agent and got the prices, the agent gave us a $100 off sale fare. Friend called me and asked if I wanted to book. I said I wanted it cheaper. So he ask and we got another $50 off. So good deal we got it less than the sale prices ($150 off). Not so good that I had to be pushy to get the extra $50 off. I'm sure they still made heaps of profit.
I could bore you with a story about a corporate travel agent we used but I won't.

 

[JohnK]

Travel agents do have their uses and sometimes they can get good deals.

I posted on AFF a number of years ago I was trying to help a friend and his business partner with QF open-jaw tickets SYD-PEK//HKG-SYD. Could not get anywhere near the price quoted by travel agent.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

TAs can be useful.

Friend of mine was looking to purchase an upgradeable QF economy fare on-line from QF. This involved a couple hundred dollars more than the cheapest fare on the QF website.

happened to stop at a TA (just walked in off the street) and they offered V class for the same price QF was offering non-upgradeable N/O/Q (which ever it was).

no surcharge to play upgrade lottery!

 

[Aussie_flyer]

We're not all bad and you know some of those wholesalers the TA is using may have a much cheaper and better deal at a hotel than by booking direct. It's worth checking anyway.

 

[coles525]

I have a question in regards to price matching:

Harvey World is "offering" economy to HK for $2,021.09 return for 2 people for online bookings, But... IF I was to pay over the phone, there is no CC fees for amex.

It says nothing about cheaper costs in the stores.

Now, Flight Centre is quoting 2 prices for the exact same flight (amex surcharge + mc/visa surcharge).

Other then trying for the can you beat this online quote (as well as getting an on store quote), would/might they go tit for tat if I then phoned the competitor, saying im right now at.....?

 

[Awesom Andy]

Not so good that I had to be pushy to get the extra $50 off.

Since it's already cheaper than the sale price, surely you can't expect them to automatically surrender their commission in the first quote?

 

[Sdtravel]

Flight center waived the credit card fee for me as part of their beat any price policy.
So I got the tickets cheaper than qantas.com and didnt have to pay the surcharge for my Amex.

All my booking is credit card fee free.

Awsom andy - the guy already told me he would take $100 - $150 off qantas price so I was really only reminding him what he promised me.

 

[blackcat20]

The only time I've used a TA I turned up at my hotel to find no record of our booking, and fully booked. Being a weekend, no one available to deal with it at the TA office.

 

[harvyk]

I used to use TA's, and when it was a good mate of mine who was a TA in the well known chain I suspect we're talking about, I ended up been treated very well.

The deal breaker for me was the last time I used a TA (unfortunately my mate had been promoted to the corp side of the business, and thus I could no longer use him) where I booked a hotel in AKL. I had booked a few weeks back and was told my hotel booking voucher was coming shortly. The day before I was meant to go I was told "it'll arrive here this afternoon" which it didn't. The next morning I went to the airport and called the FA, "yes it has arrived", my response "yes but I'm now at the airport". Since I was doing CBR-BNE-AKL I asked them to FAX the voucher to the int J Lounge in BNE. Luckily the managed to do it before I arrived so when I got to the BNE J Lounge it was ready for me to pick up, but had I simply done the booking online I would have received a confirmation page at the same time as booking, I would have been sure that I had a place to sleep well before the day of travel.

Needless to say, I haven't used them for bookings since, and I tend to call up the hotels directly.