Business travel agents

[Nov0caine]

What are your experiences with business travel agents? I'm only a junior expat so I'm new to the whole outsourcing external corporate travel agents to do my planning... I went through BCD Travel for my last trip to Hong Kong and they were pretty decent, but I'm keen to find out who other people use...?

Btw they have some free white paper downloads available on their site, these should give you more of an idea of the level of service and performance... It says you have to subscribe but they don't spam (don't worry).

 

[2muchplastic]

Business travel agents are much the same as retail travel agents - it really all depends on the individual you get on the day.

My employers use Amex Business Travel worldwide, and I have to say that they vary anywhere between pretty damned useless to exceptional.

Some agents will really try hard to do the best job they can, giving a variety of quotes and do everything you ask for. Others just couldn't give a flying cough*.

 

[`X']

I can't really talk for Business agents as such but in the industry with the turnover that has been happening and the downsizing happening everywhere, finding quality staff seems to be an issue.

If you find an agent who is willing to do what you ask them to do with little to no fuss... stick with it.

Im an agent (domestic wholesale) and i come across a whole variety of other agents (they call me) every day, some fantastic, some not so good. In my personal experience though is if you find someone who is good, don't always think they are gonna stay that way...

Someone who is currently doing my international bookings for my personal travel has changed a lot from the stores she worked for. She worked for a HW Travel agency and she was great, however she moved to a Flight Centre branded store... quality went down...

Moral of the story... Shop around a bit... when you find someone stick with it for a little while, if it doesn't work out.. move on!!

 

[Nov0caine]

Yeah i'm kind of paranoid about being shafted by agents but BCD Travel has been exceptional to me so far... From what I've been hearing anyway most people who are outsourcing agents build personal relationships over the years, which makes sense because then they're likely to be driven to work hard for you. I'm still at the stage of trying before buying into anything I guess you could say, but thanks for the advice - it helps a lot!

 

[StevePER]

Apologies for the rant, but...

I think our corporate travel agent is a bunch of incompetent rip-off merchants. We're currently trying to book a trip to Washington. Our corporate travel policy is that this should be in business class, but the travel agent is trying to get us to do the domestic legs in DJ economy with SYD-SFO in business. They haven't come up with any other options, so we've had to do all the work ourselves (which I don't mind but it is stopping me from doing any actual work). Expertflyer have earned their US$10 for this month.

So then we suggested a DONE4, but apparently our corporate policy is to avoid Qantas at all costs (not the travel agent's fault, but it shouldn't take them three days to explain the policy to us - at first we were told company policy was UA only). We can't book a Star Alliance round the world (requires 24 days advance purchase) and MH and EK are also banned by company policy. So now we're trying a VS/SQ round the world. No response from the travel agent at this stage.

I don't blame the travel agent for all of this - our policy of arbitrarily banning certain airlines isn't their fault, but they should be very familiar with the policy and able to suggest suitable business class alternatives. I also belive that the turnaround time to communicate with them is unacceptable.

Rant over.

Edit: Now they have kindly booked us on BNE-LAX-IAD-MUC-LHR-FRA-SIN-PER with LAX-IAD in economy. I'm baffled.