I’ve heard stories from several friends recently about using a US based travel agent to arrange travel in Asia.  One friend was headed to Vietnam and Cambodia.  She has a long-time travel agent who booked all the flights and hotels for her plus guides in each place.  For two weeks, she paid US$12,000.  She could have done the same trip for half the price by doing her own booking and deciding on guides or drivers as she arrived at each place.

If you want the convenience of having someone else do the booking for you, fine.  But the current price structure for travel agents is such that you don’t know just how much you are paying for the convenience.  And often, people who book guides ahead like this don’t really know if they will need a guide somewhere.  For instance, she booked a guide for two days in Hanoi.  Most people get to Hanoi and realize they don’t need a guide at all in the city.  And if you want a guide, good guides are easily hired – and for less than half the price of booking ahead through a US travel agent.

Another couple was going to Thailand.  The couple had their travel agent price out the trip for them – just flights and accommodation.  Accommodation alone came to US$5000 per person.  My friend was shocked.  Yes, they’d opted for a 4-night stay at a very nice and very pricey resort that had individual villas with plunge pools, but the price seemed out of line in terms of the reports they’d heard from other travelers.

I suggested they take a look at what they would have to pay if they booked the hotels themselves.  They were amazed to see that the price for the two of them was US$5080 – about half of what the travel agent wanted to charge them.

That said, there are times when using a travel agent can be very helpful.  Some times I use a Thailand-based travel agent to book flights that are not book-able online or in cases where he could get a better price by buying in Bangkok.  He does not charge any extra for the booking, but simply collects the commission from the airline.  It’s easy, it’s convenient, and it’s fair.  If he wanted to charge me something for the service, that would be fine with me – as long as the charges were clear and up-front.

When we traveled to Sri Lanka, we found that using a local agent assured us of getting the accommodations we wanted and it allowed us to have a contract with a company to supply a car and driver.  If you have a contract with a company and there are problems with either the car or the driver, the company can make a change for you on the road.

If you have contracted with an individual driver, you have no recourse.  We still did all of the research on where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do, and the agency accommodated all of our requests.  I checked the websites of the individual places we stayed and found that the mark-up by the travel agency was minimal; mostly they made their money from commissions paid to them by the hotels.

Burma (Myanmar) is another place where it is often helpful to have a local travel agent.  But for most places, a local agent is not needed.

Many times people use a travel agent out of habit or because they are afraid they don’t know what to do.  It is true that it takes more time and effort to research exactly where you want to go, what you want to do, and where you want to stay, but doing your research assures that you’ll get the trip you want.  Whether you are using a travel agent or even taking a group tour, you’ll get much more out of your trip if you are prepared.  So reading about your destination – guidebooks, history, travel essays, fiction – all will enhance your enjoyment of a place.

Doing that kind of preparation makes it easy to plan and book your trip.  Add internet travel boards to the mix and you’ll get lots of recommendation for places to stay, restaurants, etc.  And travel boards are often good places to learn about internet hotel booking sites.

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