What does your TA do for you?

[cruzeluver]

We found our TA through some very good friends whose opinion we trust and so far, so good.

 

She has always given us at minimum some OBC but has also (depending on the sailing) also covered our gratuities and the occasional specialty dining.

 

She also goes to bat for us when there is an issue and monitors price drops really well.

[snowskier]

In addition to a discount and OBC, I am getting 72,000 airline points this time around -- those are priceless as that means 2 free flights across the ocean. Hard to beat that.

 

The TA is a large agency but the service has always met 100% of my expectations. I'm pretty low maintenance though -- don't book until I know I am going, pick the cabin and don't change. Don't think I have ever had to call or get anything else done before the cruise. The TA works it if the price goes down and lets me now I now have more OBC.

 

The combination of discount, OBC, airline points and awesome service make it a pretty easy decision to use the TA.

[Bizmark'sMom]

My travel agent 1) makes sure that the airline travel dates and times are correct ((really helpful when flying to and from destinations that cross the date line)), 2) plans some of the more interesting excursions (some I'll do through the cruise line, most I'll do privately and have a tour that's geared completely to what I'm interested in.), 3) coordinates hotels and transportation to and from airport and cruise terminal.

 

Sure, I could do all of that on my own. Where the TA really comes in is in cases where the ship's itinerary changes due to weather (can't get into Wales, so we're spending another day in France instead), where the cruise itself changes (prices dropped dramatically, so we'll get you the new price or a whole bunch of nice perks), or flights get wonky (he'll be on top of things, getting me re-routed). I am more than happy to pay him for the privilege of being able to travel with just one phone number to call to get SNAFUs handled.

[springfire]

It really depends on what you are looking for. Usually your local agent will help you more if you are unsure with your plans, customer service tends to be better. If you already know what you want, you can find a travel agent that will give you a significant amount of onboard credit. We usually book directly with the cruise line and transfer to an agent,

[Hlitner]

We currently use 3 different terrific online cruise agencies for our many cruises. What they do is that they save us money (sometimes a lot of money) and often can use their clout to get us an upgrade. I will give you a great example that happened this past Tuesday. On Tuesday morning we received an e-mail from one of our agencies about an amazing deal on this Saturday's (Oct 24) Regal Princess cruise. After a quick check to see if I could get a good deal on return air I called the agent. She mentioned that they had an even better unadvertised last minute deal on that cruise. In the end we booked a 10 day cruise, in a high category balcony, for a total cost (for 2 including all taxes/fees) of $1300. In addition we were able to get over $400 in On Board Credits. This is a true steal at a fraction of the cost normally charged for this cruise. If we look at the price for a similar cabin on Princess's own web site (where they have a huge sale on this cruise) it is $1710 for our $1300 cabin. And the OBCs are not quite as good since our agent tosses in some OBC funded by the agency.

 

But the real worth of good proactive agencies is on the much longer (we have taken 60 day+ cruises) trips. Savings can often amount to thousands of dollars. As a general rule we normally expect to save 7-10% of the cruise fare by shopping among a few agencies.

 

Hank

Edited October 17, 2015 by Hlitner