Would you bother with a travel agent?

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(@sfgal530 -- I'd like your input!)

My husband and I are planning on going to Spain in May.  We'll be there for 10 nights.  We've picked out our hotels, and only one (which we'll be staying at for only 2 nights) is affiliated with Virtuoso so I'm not sure what kinds of advantages we'd get at the other hotels by booking through an agent.

Would it be worth booking through our travel agent anyway?  Will he be able to book us at the other places we've picked?  (I've only ever used an agent for Virtuoso properties).

Thanks!

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I wouldn't use an agent for anything in Western Europe. I would if I was doing something a bit off the beaten path, but with the internet it is pretty easy to book your own vacations.

We do use an agent to book on Cunard because she usually gets us better onboard credit amounts than we can booking it ourselves.

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This may be an isolated experience, but I thought it was kind of a pain to use a Virtuoso agent for part of a trip because I got a lot of push-back on booking non-Virtuoso hotels and no real perks. I'd just book the hotels on my own if it's not a complicated trip you really need help orchestrating.

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Jan 3, 2014 10:53:17 GMT -5 @sfgal530 said:

Jan 3, 2014 5:06:39 GMT -5 @travelbug1210 said:

This may be an isolated experience, but I thought it was kind of a pain to use a Virtuoso agent for part of a trip because I got a lot of push-back on booking non-Virtuoso hotels and no real perks. I'd just book the hotels on my own if it's not a complicated trip you really need help orchestrating.

I wouldn't expect it to be an isolated experience, honestly.  If you aren't an established client who sends a LOT of business their way, what's the incentive to book a small portion of a larger trip for them?  I have no idea how much their kickback from these hotels is, but I have a hard time imagining it is more than 10-20%, so if you're booking into, say, a $500 a night room for 2 nights, that's maybe a $100-$200 commission for them.  It's probably not good business practice to do too many jobs like that, because even though it seems straight forward, there's still time spent in reserving it, back-and-forth communication, confirming everything, etc.  So that profit can quickly erode.

I ask my Virtuoso agent to book single-night stays for me and she happily does so, but that's because I give her enough business that I know she's making great money off me (and we're pretty friendly).  I would not ask her to book a single hotel room stay if she wasn't getting plenty of business from me in the form of at least 2 really big trips a year. 

I totally agree. I was very turned off by this experience because we had booked with her in the past, and my immediate family uses her regularly and has for several years. Maybe I'm being silly, but it rubbed me the wrong way. I should add that I very much like the agent personally and was very pleased with a trip to Egypt we booked back in 2010. Hopefully Vs experience is similar to yours!