Why Use a Travel Agent

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Just as you would consult with a lawyer, an accountant or a physician in their fields, travel agents are your professional advisors in their field. In addition, travel agents have access to a variety of tools and knowledge that the average consumer is not able to access.

Travel Advisors (Agents) are travel experts and are keenly aware of the market and can match you with a better product than you can find on the Internet. They typically spend tens of thousands of dollars a year and countless hours expanding their knowledge of destinations, vendors, suppliers, properties, activities, entry/exit requirements, and everything else travel related. In addition to being well-informed about destinations around the globe and having visited many themselves, advisors can offer travel tips to help you along the way. If they haven't personally been to your destination, a colleague or preferred tour operator has.

Travel Advisors are globally connected, and clients can take advantage of those connections in the form of exclusive deals, experiences, and service in and around their destination. Travel Advisors also have access to a variety of tools and knowledge that the average consumer is not able to access.

Something that seems as simple as the ability to hold cruise and air options for you and confirm your hotel before booking a non-refundable reservation, can save you from many unfortunate scenarios. 

Travel Advisors (Agents) know you are a real person, not a confirmation number. You can travel confidently knowing you won’t have to rely on hard-to-reach call centers in the event you need assistance or have questions. Test it out -- call that big online booking site/agency (pick any -- there are only two, despite the number of sites they put different names on) or call an airline right now. Select prompts for existing bookings, and see how long it takes to reach a human. Now call Lux Inclusive Travel 800-631-1984 and select the prompt for existing clients (#1). That's your Travel Advisor (if you chose to book with them). All throughout the pandemic, clients of Lux Inclusive Travel were able to quickly and easily get assistance by phone, email, or through our app. Conversely, when the pandemic hit, the largest online booking site (with ads not meaning to be ironic, saying "it matters who you travel with" and "You're not alone with them"), shut down their phone lines for weeks. If you had a booking and needed help, or you watched the news, you already know this. Here at Lux Inclusive Travel, we can proudly say that we took care of every detail and got EVERY client their money or credit back from suppliers and vendors. It meant over 6 months of working 16-hour days without compensation, but it was worth it to know our clients didn't suffer anything more than disappointment during the pandemic. This is an odd brag, but we only fired one client and received only one negative review (same client) during the 2 years we were dealing with COVID cancellations -- the most difficult time in the history of the travel industry. That is quite a success, and an example of how personalized service and relationships benefit you as a consumer. 

This is starting to get specific, so let's broaden it back out.

Travel Advisors devote serious time and effort, because they are invested in making sure you are happy and satisfied with your trip – knowing they helped you make lifelong memories. They are there for you before, during and after your trip to help ensure everything goes smoothly. Your Travel Advisor answers your calls and responds to your emails no matter where you are in the world.

Your advisor wants to create a lifelong relationship with you. As you develop a relationship with your Travel Advisor, they can identify and build the right trips for you without much conversation. Eventually, a quick phone call or email saying, “2 weeks at the end of September” could result in a custom-built vacation based on your personal preferences and desires – with two beds, because your Travel Advisor already knows that your spouse hogs the blankets.

Your repeat business and referrals are far more valuable to a Travel Advisor than whatever you are currently booking. Because of this, your satisfaction with the vacation experience and building that relationship goes far beyond “making a sale”.

Many online travel deals can appear too good to be true - and many are. Working with a Travel Advisor (Agent) ensures that you are working with reputable vendors and they read the fine print so you won't be the victim of a scam or deceived in any way.

Travel Advisors work for you, not the travel suppliers. Unlike online booking sites, Lux Inclusive Travel does not accept any advertising money or preferential treatment from travel suppliers or vendors for showing or recommending their products. The “customer review” practices for online booking sites are also biased due to advertising dollars from the vendors being reviewed. You can be confident that your Travel Advisor is making decisions based on your unique needs and doing their best to make your vacation experience as wonderful as possible. 

Travel planning is becoming more and more difficult with pandemic restrictions/protocols, the political climate -- and the earth’s climate. Hurricanes, earthquakes, snowstorms, volcanos, wildfires, strikes against travel suppliers, shootings, bombings, booking site bankruptcies, airline bankruptcy, airline fuel shortages, flight cancellations, countries suspending Visas and State Department warnings. Do you want to navigate that on your own? Travel Advisors feel a huge responsibility to re-assure and assist their clients in making the best possible choices and can be instrumental in helping you understand which destinations are accessible. 

Travel Advisors have the access and the knowledge to help speed your re-accommodation, and act as your advocate when there are problems. You have access to an actual person with whom you have a relationship. When something out of your control is affecting your travel plans, nobody wants to sit on hold with the airline, cruise line, or tour operator for hours. Your Travel Advisor will have your back.

Reading about places to go is fun and exciting, but planning a trip is stressful. There is so much data available online, in magazines/books, and on TV. Travel Advisors (Agents) travel for work, looking at everything from the size of the rooms to the dining options and activities available. They also know how to find the deals. Travel Advisors know exactly where to go to get the information they need and know how to verify it.

Your time is valuable, and you shouldn't have to spend hours or days searching for the right options and making sure your itinerary makes sense. A travel Advisor can do this for you. They can match you with the vacation that fits your needs, desires, and budget – not just the one you saw in a banner ad. A travel Advisor can also help you define what you want out of a vacation.

Travel Advisors take care of every aspect of your trip, from cruises, flights and hotel to ground transportation, excursions, and tours. Planning a vacation with an advisor saves time and money because they’ll handle all travel arrangements. When your entire itinerary is planned with an advisor, you only have to deal with one person you know, rather than multiple vendors, suppliers, and websites -- all of whom have no idea who you are.

This word means different things to different people, but it never means "cheap". The lowest price is rarely the best value, although it's very convenient when it is. At Lux Inclusive Travel, "value" means getting as close to your version of perfect as your vacation dollars can buy.

Often, Travel Advisors (Agents) can save you money based on their supplier relationships -- or at least match the price you find -- while saving you time, effort, stress, and uncertainty. Saving time, effort, and stress is a value all on it's own. There are also hidden savings built into vacation packages. A Travel Advisor will likely book key features and options, which are included in the price. Things most people don’t notice when booking online are the ability to select your seat for flights, the ability to change or cancel, refundable or non-refundable deposits, cost of cribs/rollaway beds, including breakfast at your hotel, the hotel being 4 hours from where you need to be, length and number of layovers, layovers that require driving to another airport, layovers too short to catch a connecting flight, flight times that cause you to miss a day of your vacation, traveling with 4 people and booking a room that only allows 3… the list goes on and on. 

Sometimes a package you book yourself won't include the options you need, or the contracts with hotels don't provide certain safeguards for you, making the experience appear cheaper at first glance, until you individually add the extras you will ultimately need. Even worse (and very common), arriving at your destination and finding that you didn’t book the right option and the hotel is fully booked, you booked an option with no remedy if you don't get what you paid for, or your flight does not arrive in time to board your cruise or meet your tour. These are very costly and difficult situations to be in. You will wish you had a Travel Advisor to call. Unfortunately, unless you booked your travel with that advisor, they can't help you or work on your behalf to fix your situation. Privacy laws, insurance, not getting paid, and principle (you opting to give your business to an online booking site) make that impossible. Although, in almost all cases, if your planning was done by a Travel Advisor, the situation wouldn't exist. 

If that $12 savings from the online booking site can ultimately cost you hundred or thousands of dollars, or simply cost you a day of your vacation, it's not much of a value.

Don't think that using a Travel Advisor will cost you more than if you booked the trip yourself. This is a common misconception. As mentioned, advisors have access to the best deals and the expertise to get you the most value for your vacation dollars. Sometimes one component may be slightly more expensive, but your overall vacation will usually be less expensive with a Travel Advisor.

There is no do-over for a vacation gone wrong. Travel Advisors can help you plan the vacation that meets your needs, desires and budget. They listen, make suggestions, adjust based on your feedback, understand your concerns and become a friend. It’s not just a search engine or an anonymous voice.

With that being said, the services at Lux Inclusive Travel are not for everyone. They are for those who appreciate that we do the work not just to make a living, but because we enjoy making life and travel better for our clients. For those who don’t value the service, and only want to find the cheapest version of a vacation, we recommend using an online booking site. Although the prices aren’t lower with an online booking site, if the cheapest possible version of every component is your primary concern, our knowledge, experience and advise isn’t necessary. We don’t want to put the work into a client who doesn’t value the work, and we don’t want to be responsible for a vacation we know won’t meet your needs or expectations. We work within your budget, but if your entire requests is, "I want a tropical vacation as cheap as possible" you don't need a Travel Advisor, you need a search engine. We work within your budget to match you to the best vacation options. If your budget won't allow for what you need, we will suggest you don't book a vacation yet. We would rather lose or postpone some business than book you on a trip that doesn't meet your needs.

Travel advisors invest thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars in ongoing education (classes, trainings, experiences) to ensure clients avoid costly mistakes.  

Even when the only thing we learn is that something is no good or not worth the money or the time, we may feel that WE wasted money and time, but this is an invaluable education, because it protects our clients from wasting time, wasting money, and from lowering the overall quality of their vacation experience. Most travel nightmares and wasted vacation dollars are caused by booking the wrong thing rather than by the problems you usually read about. 

Unlike issues out of their control (delayed flights, cancelled tours, bad weather) which travelers generally see as travel nightmares, things that were entirely within their control (disappointing tours, wasted days, false expectations), are often considered “mistakes” or “unfortunate circumstances” even though the result is the same – lost time, lost money, and lost experiences. These are absolutely travel nightmares that they set themselves up for by not taking advantage of what travel advisors have invested in to protect them. 

Travel advisors take responsibility to prevent such experiences, saving you time, money, and maximizing vacation enjoyment. This is a value that usually goes unnoticed by those who plan their own vacations. 

These are also nightmares you don’t read about very often, because DIY travelers don’t like to publicly post their mistakes, and because for whatever reason, they don’t consider these things travel nightmares. 

Although most travelers don't post much about their mistakes, what they frequently do is leave negative reviews. From now on, every time you read a negative review of a tour, activity, or any other component of a person’s vacation, look at those reviews now for what they are; mistakes. Those are travel nightmares and a wasted visit to that destination. Also look at them as a hidden cost of NOT having an expert working on your behalf, because that is exactly what they are.

Your Travel Advisor (Agent) will work harder than anyone else to help ensure you are happy.  Your satisfaction is what determines the advisor's reputation. In many cases they are working for free, yet you would never know based on the service you receive.  Travel Advisors are some of the most well-rounded, funny, personable, and  knowledgeable people you'll meet. They come from extremely varied backgrounds, but have one thing in common: They are  passionate about sharing the world with you. Take advantage of their services. Remember that you are paying for their services no matter how or where you book -- always. If you don't know, now you know.