1. “Oh, you won’t find the best deals here, you should check online.” The traditional “brick and mortar” agency is going to consider online travel agencies as their arch rival, so they will never tell you to go check online and try to get a better deal. It doesn’t matter if you end up paying substantially more for your tickets, they want you to stick with them. Of course, this does not mean you will never get a better deal at a regular agency.
2. You may be paying numerous service charges. Years ago travel agent personnel could end up making quite a lot of money on commissions. For example, you would book a flight and the airline would pay the agent a “commission” of sorts, allowing them to make a very good yearly salary if they booked a lot of airline fares.
3. “We make a lot of mistakes!” Ever hear that from your travel agent? No? Thought not. The fact is, agencies make a lot of errors, bookings get messed up, tickets get entered in wrong, and all sorts of problems. The one good thing though is that you will have a human to speak to when you get to your destination and find things are not as they should be.
4. “We don’t have the best customer service.” This from your online agency. The reason? It’s tough to speak to a real live person sometimes when you have a problem. Oh, you can find one eventually, but by then your vacation might be over!
5. Wrong info. Yes, you might get bogus information from your travel agency. Well, let’s say for example you plan to travel abroad and you need information on currency exchange or perhaps what documents you require.
