Travel Agent expectations

[ldubs]

22 hours ago, donaldsc said:

 

They are not major screwovers but annoying things such as not getting stuff that I should be getting or trying to get reservations for stuff or activities which I only ended up getting because the agent waved her magic wand.

 

The 2 last minute problems were potentially more serious.

 

1. We were flying from Las Vegas to Atlanta to Athens.  I am always conservative so I allowed three plus hours for my Atlanta connection.  Because of issues in Vegas I was uncertain if I would make my Atlanta connection.  This would not have ruined the cruise since I had planned for several days pre-cruise in Athens.  I called my agent from the plane before takeoff and asked her if she could find alternative flights just in case.  We landed with just 1/2 hours to make the connection.  As we landed she called us while we were taxiing to the gate to tell us that she had found and had put a hold on a flight.  Turned out that we did barely make the flight but we knew that if we didn't make it we had an alternative flights already arranged.

 

2. This one was on me.  We got to the airport for a flight to Japan.  This was last summer and there were a lot of people going to Japan and flights to Japan were almost completely booked.  Turns out that my wife took an expired passport with her so we obviously were not going to get on the plane.  Called out TA again.  She got us flights on the same day and we got to Japan that day as expected.  The connections were not good and the tickets were expensive but we got there.   Again we were not going to miss the cruise since we planned for several days in Tokyo before the cruise but with her help we did not miss any of our Tokyo cruise.

 

I guarantee that we would not have gotten that level of service if we used a big box travel agency or had booked through the cruise line.

 

DON

 

That travel agent earned their keep for sure.