How to Choose a Good Travel Agent (continued)
Experience and knowledge
A travel agent who has had some years of experience is more likely to have encountered most of the tricks and traps that can sometimes lurk unexpectedly out there. There's also more reason to believe that veteran agents are committed to the travel industry and are likely to remain so, at least until your travels have been completed.
As well as general industry experience, you want an agent who has personal and recent knowledge of the travel products they'll be recommending to you. This probably means they should have visited the destinations you'll be visiting, and done much of the same touring you'll be doing. Hopefully they have stayed at the same hotels, and have done so in the last two or three years.
Agents can also supplement their personal experience by sending other clients to the places you'll be going and then getting feedback from those people upon their return, and by attending seminars and 'road shows' by suppliers and destination tourism companies.
There are some semi-formal industry training programs some agents choose to take. They might have passed a Destination Specialist course for the region you're traveling to - either one offered by the region itself or by a recognized travel agency school. They might have received training in cruise lines/cruise ships, and they might also have general travel management training.
References
While we're on the topic of "other clients," feel free to ask the agent if they have some satisfied past clients you can speak to as a point of reference.
Ease of contact
You want to be able to conveniently contact your travel agent both before your travels start and potentially while you're traveling too.
How easy is it to contact your agent? Do they consistently either answer their phone or quickly return messages?
Do they have a toll free number for when you're elsewhere in the US? Do they use email and answer emails quickly?
What hours do they work? Do they have an after-hours emergency service to help you if you're traveling and something goes wrong outside office hours?
Ability to understand you and your needs
Does the agent seem to be the type of person who understands you and your travel interests? As an extreme example, a 21-year old man is unlikely to understand a 51-year old woman's interest in visiting luxury spas. Does the agent ask you sensible relevant questions and are they answering your questions in a way that shows they understand you and your needs?
Added value services
Is there anything else the agent or agency can do to help you with your travels? You may even wish to ask an open-ended question such as "How else can you help me with my travels?"
Maybe the agent has a library of travel videos they loan out to clients. Perhaps they have access to cabin upgrades on cruises. By some chance they may have a contract with an airline that allows them to waive advance booking requirements. Maybe there is something else they can do - ask them.
Fees and rebates
These days, travel agents are less likely to earn commissions on airfares. For that reason, if you're only buying an airfare, the agent may need to charge you a fee for their help. But if you're buying a complete travel package, the agent is more likely to be earning commissions on most or all of the items they are booking for you - sometimes as much as 20%.
If you're simply asking a travel agent to book you a cruise, and if that takes the agent no more than an hour or two to do, and if that is perhaps a $5000 cruise on which they are making a $1000 commission, some agencies may choose to not only waive all fees for doing this work for you, but also possibly to rebate back to you part of their commission.
Of course if you are having the agent book a detailed itinerary for you, including various items of low value or which don't pay commission, and if the agent ends up spending 20 hours on your booking and earns only $500 in commissions, they're not going to want to rebate any commission and might instead quite fairly expect an extra fee from you.
There's no standard approach to this issue, so you'll have to ask the question and negotiate the outcome based on the complexity of your booking and the amount of commission the agent earns.
Summary
Our referral process increases the chance of you dealing with a good agent. By considering the appropriate factors we detail above, you can ensure that the agent you ultimately choose is not just a good agent but a great agent.
