We had a lively debate recently on the merits of whether to use a live travel agent to book your vacation or to go it alone by using the Internet. Here are some of the reasons to consider a personal travel consultant.

1. You’ve Googled “Mexico vacation,” and come up with 17.8 million responses. Need a little help editing those choices?

2. Remember when you used that obscure website to book your hotel, and when you got there you spent your beach vacation overlooking a parking lot?

3. How many hours were you on hold with the airline when your flight was canceled because of a snowstorm?

4. Did you really mean to spend your honeymoon at that resort whose one tiny pool was filled all day with 12 screaming children?

5. Who knew that when you booked that “villa” in Tuscany, it would be a small room with a kitchenette and no air conditioning? Funny, it looked much better on your computer screen.

6. No one explained to you that in July, it’s winter time in Rio, and so you showed up there with nothing but five Hawaiian shirts and three pairs of swimming trunks.

7. How about the time you really needed a restful vacation, and you ended up in New Orleans during Mardi Gras and someone threw up on your shoes?

8. Yes, I guess that hotel must have used a telephoto lens when they took a picture of those guest rooms that you saw on their website.

9. I suppose contacting the Attorney General to resolve the fact that that Internet site has billed your credit card three times instead of once is the only route to take at this point.

10. It was definitely odd that there were no cab drivers at the airport at 3 o’clock in the morning when you finally landed in Costa Rica, but booking a transfer to your very remote hotel would have been a good thing to remember when you purchased your airline ticket and hotel online.

In the interest of fairness here are 10 reasons why you should NOT be going to your friendly neighborhood Travel Consultant.

1. It is more fun to go searching for lodging, ground transportation, activities, tours from multiple sources than with 1 call to your agency.

2. When problems occur during your trip you enjoy being confrontational and thrive on dealing directly with the source.

3. You’ll rob yourself of the experience of flying into the other Charleston airport CHS not CRW/Charleston W.Va.

4. You enjoy all the time consuming detailed work of planning a complex itinerary.

5. You want to work anonymously on numerous websites

6. Documents? What documents? You’ll just sort required travel documents like visas and passports as you go. Besides when you sailed 20 years ago you just needed a birth certificate.

7. You don’t care that you don’t have access to travel suppliers who exercise their clout with hotels, resorts to provide such amenities as early check-in, late checkout, room upgrade; dollar resort credits complimentary meals.

8. Your time and expertise will get you the best bang for your travel dollar!

9. You will thoroughly enjoying blaming yourself when something on your trip goes wrong!

10. There are two trips out there-a great one and the one from hell. You can easily which is the great one!

 

PS: Trip adviser is your best friend and you don’t care if one hotelier just posted over 100 glowing reports about his property!

PSS: Of course you know best what to do with your time and money! So why seek expert advice and opinions?

But just in case I haven’t convinced you, stop by or contact your local travel agent! They get paid to tell you where to go!

 

Got travel? E-mail Steve Call at the travelprofessor@gmail.com or dial 740.550.9540.