Worth the money
In these days of DIY travel planning online, why bother with an agent?
Here are five instances where it probably would be worth the extra cost. (And note that in the case of cruises, there often is no extra cost.)
1. You’ve been dying to go to Europe (Australia, Japan, Antarctica, Mexico), but you haven’t ever left the U.S., and you hate surprises.
The strangest things can trip you up. For example, “some people have no idea how big or small a place is,” says Joanne Kilborn, an agent at Gulliver’s Travel American Express in Fort Worth.
She remembers one client who wanted to rent a car and drive across Australia. “It’s as wide as we are,” Kilborn says, comparing Australia to the U.S. “The distances are too long, and the services are too few.”
Agents today generally charge a fee for securing your airline ticket (Gulliver’s charges $30 for domestic flights) and an up-front planning fee for researching an itinerary ($100 at Gulliver’s, which is later applied to your trip). Paying $130 sounds better than running out of gas with nothing but kangaroos for company.
2. The whole family has decided to go to Paris for Mom and Dad’s 50th anniversary.
That sweet Parisian hotel that looked so charming on the Internet might be in a crazy, all-night neighborhood that would scare Mom half to death. Or maybe your rooms face a courtyard where rock bands play all night on weekends. This isn’t a good time to take a chance sight unseen.
“Wide lenses do wonderful things, and they clean up a lot of things, too,” says Elena Yoria, managing partner at Travel Service Everywhere in Fort Worth. “If you only have, say, a few weeks a year vacation time and you want to split it into two nice trips, do you want to risk taking a chance on guessing if this place is great or not?”
3. You are allergic to anything with a molecule of peanut in it, and your fiance can’t have strawberries.
The honeymoon could turn into a medical disaster. Enter Megan Carpenter, who runs Carpenter Travel out of her home in Arlington, Texas. She has food allergies herself and specializes in booking cruises for others who do.
“I research everything for them, find the best deal for them, find a cruise ship that’s going to fit with what they’re looking for,” Carpenter says.
4. You hate doing research – you’d rather just be there.
Kilborn recalls a couple who planned their own trip to Germany, rented a car and then “drove ‘round and ‘round and ‘round and couldn’t get out of the Frankfurt airport because they didn’t know the word for exit.”
Worse still, the couple didn’t book a hotel for the first night. A cardinal rule of travel: Always make sure you have a place to lay your head when you arrive.
If you don’t like thinking about things like that or are attached to a rigid agenda even though you’ve never been to a place, ask an expert. It will save you nightmares such as planning to see sites on opposite sides of a huge city, finding you can’t and going home disappointed.
5. Money is no object, and you crave exclusivity.
A high-end business such as Lisa Lindblad Travel Design in New York City is your ticket. Her Web site says that Lindblad has the connections to arrange an after-hours tour of Versailles, for example, and that she has an exclusive relationship with a yacht broker who has boats “in most parts of the world.”
Lindblad sees itineraries as theater, with distinct acts. One act might be “when you have a wonderful guide in Paris, and he arrives with the hair all sticking up on his head like he’s just fallen out of bed. But to walk around the Left Bank with him … he’s absolutely passionate about his city … he can show you where Catherine Deneuve lives or a beautiful staircase people wouldn’t normally see.”
That kind of access begins with a $2,000 consultation fee.