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Comment by Krisjohn | Hacker News Reader

Our travel agent is an individual with a reputation. An app is not. An app is self-service and self-service is no service.

When travel agents were unable to get us something affordable in Paris, we attempted to solve it ourselves with an app. The experience was so bad I refuse to travel to Paris ever again, and now we only ever book through agents. My fault? Maybe. Enabled by a faceless marketplace that doesn't give a crap? Absolutely.

If a travel agent goes "Yeah, you probably don't want to do that" even ONCE while you're sorting out your travel plans, they just paid for themselves.

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I'm currently on a holiday in Greece that we booked ourselves after talking to a travel agent. Her main contribution was suggesting an island to stay on, but all her other suggestions ended up being worse than the options we found for ourselves. For example, we wanted a quick cheap stay in Athens so we could see the sights, so she found us some hotels that were somewhat outside the city centre - I'm sure they were okay, but what we actually wanted (and ended up booking ourselves) was a holiday flat in the city centre with a perfect view of the Acropolis, the flexibility we needed to sort ourselves out for breakfast and lunch, and a much cheaper price point.

Likewise, we wanted to stay in a resort for a few days afterwards and relax, so she sent us some ideas, but they were so lacklustre that we almost gave up on the idea of that part of our holiday altogether. Then we found something ourselves that was much nicer, and have been enjoying lovely beaches and incredible food for the last few days.

Even her flights were weird choices that involved a lot of waiting around at airports and would have brought us back a day earlier - booking them ourselves got us cheaper and more convenient options.

I always assumed that a travel agent would be more convenient than looking for something yourself, but I was amazed at how poor our experience was using one. Less choice and flexibility, and as you say, less self-service, and for us self-service gave us exactly what we wanted.

That's been my experience, I'm certain that good travel agents exist but finding them is hard and most don't seem to be much better than I can do myself. I've also tried some of those "concierge service" and they seem to always find much worse solutions than what I can find on my own.

It's also possible that they suggested worse options just to get a bigger fee without looking more expensive than what you could find with a single search.

I think the best "cheap" travel agents nowadays would just do the job of searching for you for an explicit fee, and then just send you the links. This is generally useful when you have specific requests and not much time to find them.

In my experience, they're like accountants and lawyers, eithet horrible or amazing (+never in between).

Most people think they're useless, because they've never used a great one.

TBH, I'm amazed that "real travel agent via videochat" isn't a thing now. Even if you end up booking yourself, I could see paying up front $20 for half an hour of asking for some basic suggestions and sanity checks, or even providing a proposed itinerary via email for review.

I'm almost sure I left money on the table the last time I booked a holiday. I could probably have optimized my rail pass choice more, not sure I picked the absolute best departure days (I could probably have gone a week earlier or later) and there was probably a better way to book a hotel when I needed two non-consecutive stays (Visit $major_tourist_city for four days, then spend three days with family, then back to $major_tourist_city)

I ended up staying in the hotel said family used when they would spend a weekend in that city, which was extremely convenient and passable, but as much as anything, I went for it because I figured I couldn't trust random weirdly cropped photos and dueling reviews on travel sites. If I want to go somewhere else, I don't have that opportunity.

> I could probably have optimized my rail pass choice more, not sure I picked the absolute best departure days (I could probably have gone a week earlier or later) and there was probably a better way to book a hotel when I needed two non-consecutive stays

But will a travel agent really do that for you? Most likely they just use more or less the same booking interface as you do and give you some package deal and that's that.

I mean competent agents that have access to Virtuoso, know how to use the old ITA interface, use SABRE, know their way around credit card points and have experience with various destination should be able to find better options than you could.

The problem is finding that elusive competent travel agent and for that travel agent to find a way to market their skills so that they can be paid more than the vast majority of incompetent travel agents.

I've used apps many times over to travel to Asia/Europe/North America, book accommodations, rent cars... and haven't had a bad experience. That's not to say that I believe bad experiences don't ever happen, but more like they don't happen enough to me that I wouldn't ever use any of the apps.

Most of my friends are more avid than myself at traveling, and they also don't use travel agents.

It's possible it's just because I'm not super picky about my accommodations.

Paris is overrated. Two or three days is plenty, in my opinion. See the Eiffel Tower, hit the museums, and then you’re done. I preferred Bordeaux even though there was less to do than in Paris. On the other hand, I live in a huge city, so cities aren’t very interesting to me, so my opinion is very biased.

You can't see more then mi iscule part of museums in small city in one day, much less in Paris. I mean, if you are u interested in them sure, but why would you go into them then in the first place.

And you pay for that which is fine. I think these sites offer ways to stay in different types of homes which provide a unique experience. There's always a risk of problems and I think that's common sense.

When articles like this are posted I often see comments like "a travel agent is more personal" or "it's an app with less control than a hotel"

Who wasn't aware of this? These aren't a revelation.

Or you can just read wikivoyage and do 5 minutes of googling, but to each his own.

You're being downvoted for a sarcatic remark but all these comments that simply point out obvious benefits seem less like genuine offers of advice and more like a way to keep damaging any big tech company.

"Travel agents offer a more personal touch"

No shit, who didn't know this?

I wasn't even being sarcastic: for me saving potentially hundreds of € is worth it, for some people they might like the "personal touch" of a travel agent.

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