scrubbedexpat097

Quality place is Ozona

It's the kind of town you expect a zombie apocalypse to begin.....or has it already???

robin1234

Could this explain events in Fredericksburg later that day? How to tell you are becoming a Zombie - Zombiepedia - Wikia

yellowroom

We have to use a US based travel agent for work and they are worse than useless. I had to go to London for a training course, and the hotel where the course was being held was full. The travel agent could not find me a hotel. They literally did not know what to do to find another one for me. I ended up finding one and booking it myself in 10 minutes.

scrubbedexpat097

No, that's just the after effects of climbing Enchanted Rock if you are over a certain "age"

robin1234

Trying to rehydrate at a winery may not have helped

scrubbedexpat097

I will not repeat your mistakes! We may be headed that way later this week

sir_eccles

My wife recently had to book travel through a company travel agent. She wanted to fly direct on American but the agent has a deal with Delta so she has to change in Atlanta doubling the travel time.

N1cky

Lots of people don't know where they want to go, or what they want to do, or some do but don't realize there might be a better option.

If you want to go to the Caribbean, it could take you hours of research to figure out which island is the best place for you. You could call your travel agent and say I love to snorkel, but my wife hates it, she likes to go hiking, oh and the kids want to go zip lining. It's important to us that the hotel pool has a lifeguard on duty, and is open after 6pm, and we want to be able to walk into a little town for dinner on an evening... They'd be able to recommend the places you could do all that, saving you hours of time.

If you book a cruise out of California, but your flight in New York is delayed because of a snow storm. Expedia aren't going to care, and aren't going to get you on to your cruise.

If you book a quiet ocean view room and you get there and your ocean view is blocked by a great big crane doing construction. Hotels.com aren't going to get you into a different hotel.

And you're not getting a hotel upgrade from any of those places either. If you book a basic room you're getting the one that overlooks the dumpster.

Lots of people think using a travel agent costs more, when in fact it often costs less. They have access to deals you can't get, they can also get you lots of perks that you can't get, and if anything goes wrong they'll sort it out for you. Often people booking online settle for a hotel because it's cheap or on offer when you see it on Expedia, but actually it's not what they really want. If you're paying $5k for your annual vacation don't you want it to be perfect, not something you've settled on just because the hotel was $10 pn cheaper...

robin1234

Unfortunately a lot of travel professionals are incompetent or show poor judgement.

I have one example I'll never forget. About ten years ago, my wife and I decided to go on a Rhine cruise. After a bit of research, we decided to go with Avalon cruises, Amsterdam to Basel one way. Avalon had a flight inclusive deal, but we chose simply to book the cruise, which we did. We decided to have a couple of days in Amsterdam beforehand, and a couple of days in Basel at the end. For price & simplicity, we decided on a round trip, nonstop flight from Montreal, PQ to Amsterdam. I knew we could take a train from Basel to Amsterdam without prebooking for a reasonable fare. We did a bit of research, and found a really nice family run pension in Amsterdam so booked that direct. All our plans were easy to book, and went like clockwork. I'm glad we went with Avalon, the cruise was brilliant.

So when we boarded the boat in Amsterdam, we met an elderly couple from Halifax, NS who had taken Avalon's flight inclusive deal. They'd only just got to the boat in time, and their luggage hadn't arrived... pretty bad when you're setting off on a cruise. Basically, the travel agent at Avalon had booked them on the cheapest available option her system had served up (Halifax to Boston to Paris to Amsterdam .... something nightmarish like that.) Predictably, they missed a connection, nearly missed the cruise, and their luggage didn't make it. It was the kind of itinerary I would have immediately rejected if I'd been making a booking for myself....

robin1234

I live in hope, but nobody ever does!!

Rete

We did virtually the same thing but went with River Cruises. We booked our own flights to Amsterdam a few days earlier than the cruise and stayed at a lovely family owned and operated B&B. We didn't stay in Basel but left the day the cruise docked. Loved Amsterdam so much I went back two years later with Collette Tours. I have to say that their flight accommodations were perfect. I had never flown KLM before and will only fly them when I go back to Europe. Delta was hell on wings and Lufthansa wasn't much better.

robin1234

Yes, in the end we didn't stay in Basel either, as at the last minute we decided to stay for a couple of nights with some friends in Germany, which broke up our long Basel to Amsterdam train journey, which was good. I'd like to stay in Basel sometime, though, it was tantalising just taking a taxi from the cruise boat straight to the railway station and not getting to see the city.

Nutmegger

I spent a wonderful day in Basel in the mid 1990s -- it was September and market day, and obviously a stall had a great deal on big bouquets of sunflowers. Everywhere there were people carrying those gorgeous flowers, on bicycles, walking, in cars. I've never forgotten it how beautiful it was -- or the amazing napoleons we bought at a little patisserie for lunch!

Rete

Stop ... you are making me want to book travel right now!

On the last trip we went to Paris and the best part of the stay was leaving the hotel and walking down the street buying fresh strawberries from a sidewalk vendor and then we found a small bakery/café and had pastries and coffee. How so much more fun on our own then on the organized tour (which was great).

tonrob

Our corporate travel agent is one of the big players, operating in scores of countries and with massive sales, yet it's fair to say that in my (fairly extensive) experience they couldn't find their arse with their own hands.

They're incapable of even finding you the right priced seat on a flight, misunderstanding fare buckets (to the tune that they routinely overcharge us by $500 for the same seat in the same cabin), cocking up hotels (can't find availability when it's staring them in the face) and more. Nowadays I have to construct the itinerary online myself on airline and hotel websites and obtain screenshots before calling (and invariably arguing) with them, eventually hand-holding them so that they can find the prices I see so that they can go ahead and charge me the exact same as I could have got independently were it not for our company's travel policy of using the agency, plus an extra booking fee for the privilege. Sometimes I have to simply hang up and then call back (to get someone else) in the hope that the next person is slightly better.

I'm certain that there are competent travel agents out there, but it tells me that no-one should blindly put themselves in the hands of an "expert" believing that this will take all the risk/hassle out of a transaction unless they do some level of due diligence too.