are travel agents making a comeback

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Make Way for the Travel Agents. Again.

After a devastating year, the travel industry is hoping for a rager of a rebirth this summer. Travel agents are planning the festivities.

By Lauren Sloss

With more people getting vaccinated and the C.D.C. largely giving the greenlight to travel for those who have had all their shots, a real-deal vacation this summer may be a reality for millions of Americans.

The news couldn’t come soon enough for the travel industry, which is hoping for a Roaring Twenties-level rager of a rebirth this summer. Flight bookings are up, hotels are filling fast , rental cottages have no availability and travelers are desperate to go pretty much anywhere .

Acting as de facto party planner? The previously disrupted, still-kicking, often misunderstood travel agent.

“We have clients who are calling us from the 15-minute waiting period after their second vaccine shot,” said Wendy Burk, founder and chief executive of Cadence , a La Jolla, Calif., travel agency. “They’re making sure they don’t have an allergic reaction, and they’re on the phone with their travel adviser saying, ‘Book me now! Book me anything!’”

Many travel agents are seeing an unprecedented surge of business, as Covid-19 has given them a new relevancy, thanks largely to the morass of constantly changing rules and restrictions that travelers must navigate.

“We had two days in March where we broke records for the number of transactions booked in a single day,” said James Ferrara, the president of InteleTravel , a 60,000-member global travel adviser network. “Our overall business is up 35 percent, not from 2020, which was an aberration, but from 2019, which was the highest year we’d ever had.”

Nearly 50 percent of those inquiries are from new customers, Mr. Ferrara said.

Indeed, travel may be on its way back, but it’s complicated. Harried Americans are looking for a proper vacation, not a stressful travel-planning experience.

Angelica Spielman, a San Diego-based financial consultant, first began working with a travel agent in the spring of 2020 at the advice of her mother-in-law. “I wanted someone to help me get creative with my kids during Covid,” she said.

Ms. Spielman, who is 38 and originally from Panama, traveled extensively with her husband and two young sons before the pandemic and enjoyed the travel-planning process. But the amount of time required to plan a trip, especially with the year’s added complications, motivated her to try something new.

Once the pandemic started, she found that “going to every hotel website, or calling them to find out what their safety protocols are, that’s a lot of time.”

In 2020, her family traveled to Carmel, Calif., and Santa Fe, N.M., on the recommendation of John Beeler, their agent; this March, they traveled to Punta Mita, Mexico.

“For this international trip, he knew what resort had medical facilities on-site in case one of us got sick,” Ms. Spielman said. “He can handle it, and I can be on vacation and fully relax.”

Booming new business for an old sector

Business, through online inquiries or telephone calls, is up for travel agencies of all types and sizes, from large companies like InteleTravel to two-person operations and even to newly opened companies. According to a flash poll conducted by ASTA , the American Society of Travel Advisors, in early March, 76 percent of travel advisers are seeing an increase in customers in 2021, compared to before the pandemic, and 80 percent are hearing from travelers who have never worked with a travel adviser before.

Even before the pandemic, travel agents scrambled to remain relevant with the rise of direct booking sites like Expedia and Booking.com, not to mention Google and Airbnb. Agents closed down brick-and-mortar locations and moved online , touting their expertise and connections while appealing to travelers too busy to plan trips for themselves. According to ASTA, the travel-agent business (or travel adviser, per a 2018 ASTA rebrand) saw an uptick between 2016 and 2019, because of millennials: This age cohort was eager to outsource the planning and benefit from V.I.P. treatment .

Ms. Burk said that 20 percent of her 2021 business so far comes from clients who are either new to using her agency, or, like Ms. Spielman, are new to using a travel agent all together.

“Lots of people got burned last spring. They didn’t have an advocate to call the airline and get their airline tickets or their cruise credited,” Ms. Burk said. “Now, the level of complexity needed to go on a basic trip has drastically increased. A client who, typically, would have planned on their own previously are looking to a professional to say, ‘Please show me the ins and outs.’”

Another full-time job

The sheer breadth of information to track, including vaccine requirements and closed borders, not to mention the rapidity with which everything can change, is challenging.

This has become Lambie Swenson’s role at Exclusive Resorts , a membership-based travel company that has a portfolio of 350 luxury villas around the world. Ms. Swenson’s official title is the Covid Navigator (in addition to her role as the senior manager of member services). She holds regular Zoom meetings for and fields emails from Exclusive Resorts members trying to plan travel in 2021 and beyond.

“A member will ask, ‘We’re interested in Cabo, but we’ve been very cautious. What’s the overall feel there?’ Or, ‘My husband is vaccinated but my kids and I aren’t’,” she said. “We get a lot of inquiries about varying requirements on different Caribbean islands. ‘Will I be able to leave my resort? How many times will I have to get tested?’”

Ms. Swenson monitors the news, and relies on reports from employees and partners at the various destinations that the club serves. There are daily morning meetings to discuss any changes in requirements to any of the destinations.

“Keeping up with the requirements for Hawaii alone is a full-time job,” she said.

Cassie Bendel, who began working with Westwind Travel Service, a two-woman partnership, in August 2019, also feels that understanding the travel rules consumes a significant amount of time. She traveled to Jamaica last November to document and vet safety procedures for her clients and more recently, she attended a 90-minute online training focusing on Hawaii’s travel protocols.

“These are things that the average traveler just doesn’t want to have to deal with,” Ms. Bendel said.

Nicole Piatak, a nanny from Stow, Ohio, began working with Ms. Bendel in the fall of 2019 to plan her honeymoon, a six-day trip to Hawaii, in October 2020.

“I love travel and adventure, but planning can be very overwhelming and exhausting for me,” Ms. Piatak, who is 27, said.

When Hawaii closed its borders to tourists last year, Ms. Bendel took the reins rebooking her trip to January.

“Once a twice a month, I would hear from her with updates on the situation in Hawaii,” Ms. Piatak said of Ms. Bendel. “I was so upset that we weren’t able to go in October, and she just took all of it off my plate.”

Still reeling

While the outlook for 2021 is more promising, travel agents are still reeling from the devastation of 2020. According to ASTA, the average agency saw business crater 82 percent last year and it laid off about 60 percent of its staff.

“The first couple of months, travel advisers were cracking their knuckles, getting their headsets on,” said Erika Richter, ASTA’s senior communications director. “They were heads down, getting people home. Now, mind you, they weren’t getting paid.”

Barring booking fees, which can range from $25 to around $100, depending on the type and complexity of a trip, agents typically make money with commissions from cruise lines, hotels, tour operators, sometimes airlines, often months after the client takes the actual trips. When people aren’t traveling, agents aren’t making much, if any, money.

“My advisers were unwinding what would have been their biggest year ever,” said Ms. Burk about those first months of the pandemic. “There was almost a grieving process. They went from making a huge income to suddenly applying for unemployment.”

A different way forward

Travel advisers hope that the past year has emphasized the continued relevance of their services.

“When I got into this business 30 years ago, I remember seeing a trust and credibility survey that put travel agents somewhere around the same level as a used-car salesman,” Mr. Ferrara said. “I think the adversity of the past year has focused travelers on the value of professional advice.”

Increased interest has also opened the possibility for new iterations of travel-planning businesses. The company Authenteco , which went live last May, has 24-hour text messaging support and an online interface allowing users to enter their travel style, interests and desired trip details; Authenteco has seen a 667-percent increase in trip requests since January. Another company, elsewhere.io , began in this month and matches travelers with local experts to craft itineraries centered around off-the-beaten-track experiences.

“We’ve seen around 200 to 300 new sign-ups per month, since November, with no paid advertising,” said Craig Zapatka, an elsewhere.io founder.

Alexis Bowen, another elsewhere.io founder, said that the company stays in constant communication with its network of local experts, whether based in South Africa or Mongolia.

“They’re the first one to know what’s happening in their own country, getting information from their own government in their own language,” she said. Having an accurate sense of how these local communities feel about opening up to travelers, before advertising trips there, is nonnegotiable.

“A big part of our company is about evaluating the positive impact of our trips on the ground,” Ms. Bowen said. “The question has been, is it actually good for us to be pushing travel in a time like this? Is this really good for the destination?”

Shelby Dziwulski, the Authenteco founder, has turned down clients that she doesn’t trust to be responsible travelers — including one who refused to get a Covid test before a trip.

“Yes, we want to plan your perfect vacation; yes we want it to be all about you and want it to be phenomenal, but never at the expense of a destination, their local community and their environment,” she said.

Whatever the style of trip, and of travel agent, Ms. Richter of ASTA hopes that travelers can appreciate the value of having a professional in their corner.

“You can only do your first post-pandemic vacation once. We hope!” she said.

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram , Twitter and Facebook . And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation.

Is travel making a comeback?

May 14, 2022 As travel restrictions and health concerns abate in some parts of the world, lines are getting longer at departure gates. Though this shift is a positive development for airlines, which saw a 60 percent dip in revenue in 2020, air travel and tourism are not expected to return to 2019 levels before 2024. What’s next for the industry? Check out these insights to understand how traveler preferences have evolved since the onset of the pandemic, what the latest trends mean for industry players, and more, including:

• why sustainability is becoming a deciding factor on where and how to travel
• how US airports can broaden their revenue sources
• how popular destinations can make a comeback

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A travel boom is looming. But is the industry ready?

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Should I Use a Travel Agent? Our Travel Expert Says It Makes All the Difference.

The new age of travel agents know how to find deals, book off-the-beaten path adventures, and get you out of any jam. Especially if you know who to use.

Heading out the door? Read this article on the Outside app available now on iOS devices for members! >","name":"in-content-cta","type":"link"}}'>Download the app .

I’ve always thought that planning my own trips was the most cost-effective way, but I’ve been hearing more about travel agents making a comeback and saving their clients a lot of money. What kinds of outdoor trips should I turn to a travel agent for, and are there any who specialize in working with adventurers like me?

Technically, I’m a professional traveler. As a journalist, it’s my job to research and connect with locals to get beneath the surface of a destination. So I have never really used travel agents. What could they plan better than I could?

A lot, it turns out. Over the years, I’ve gotten to know many travel specialists, and I consider them magicians. My big aha moment happened two winters ago on a trip to Iceland . A massive storm shut down internal flights for a day, causing me to miss my return flight to the U.S. Normally, I would have spent frustrating hours on hold with the airline. But because I’d paid $65 to have Ana Gloria Garcia, an air-support specialist at the travel agency EmbarkBeyond, find and book the most affordable and convenient flight option for me, she handled the rebookings while I soaked in the Blue Lagoon.

During the pandemic, agents became advocates helping travelers get refunds on canceled flights and trips. As travel has come roaring back, an agent’s superpower is now their access to the best hotel rooms, most in-the-know guides, free amenities, and more, says Cory Hagopian, senior vice president of sales and partnerships for Virtuoso , a global network of travel agencies.

And they’re attracting a young clientele. According to a recent industry survey , 38 percent of millennials and Gen Zers are opting to use travel agents as opposed to booking on their own trips. That number is far greater than Gen Xers and baby boomers, of whom only 12 and 2 percent respectively use agents.

What Do I Gain from Using a Travel Agent?

I recently had a friend tell me she spent close to 40 hours researching a family trip online. She probably could have gleaned the same intel from an hourlong conversation with a travel adviser. Knowledge is priceless, and advisers act as your insiders. They know what you don’t and fill in the blanks for things you might not have considered, says Erika Richter, a spokesperson for the American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA). Their firsthand knowledge, vast network, and on-the-ground connections all combine to provide a unique perspective for crafting the perfect itinerary for you.

Most travel advisers specialize in certain regions and countries and travel to them frequently, so they have up-to-date intel on not only the best safari camps but the perfect tent to book for the most incredible views and the best local restaurants you won’t find on Tripadvisor. They want their client’s trips to go well to keep them coming back, so it’s in their interest to have sussed out hotels and itineraries before they send you out into the world.

Nicole Forster, 29, considers herself a savvy traveler. She’s been to 20-plus countries and enjoys destination research. But when it came to planning her honeymoon in Africa, she felt overwhelmed, so she reached out to Danielle Meyer at Coastline Travel Advisors , which specializes in bespoke itineraries. “Originally, I wanted to go to South Africa, Victoria Falls, and Madagascar,” Forster recalls. “Danielle convinced me that if we wanted to relax, we should stay in South Africa and save the other countries for separate trips.”

Over five phone conversations and multiple emails, they crafted a 15-night itinerary that included Cape Town, the winelands, the Cape Peninsula, and a safari at the Thornybush Game Reserve. Forster established her budget early in the process, and Meyer sent her a variety of lodge options to choose from.

“I initially wanted to start with the safari, but she pointed out that we’d be jet-lagged and would need to wake at sunrise for game drives,” says Forster. “The safari was our highlight, so it was a perfect way to end the trip.”

Not only did Meyer book all of the flights, hotels, and transfers, but she created a detailed, day-by-day trip app for the couple that included useful information like check-in times at hotels and how much to tip guides .

Agents also act as advocates. If something goes wrong during your travels, they’re on call 24/7 to handle it. When Forster left the battery and charger for her camera at a hotel, Meyer arranged for an on-the-ground contact to go to a camera store and buy new ones that would be delivered to her hotel the next day.

The cost for the honeymoon planning: $150 per person. “I wouldn’t use a planner for a trip to Hawaii ,” Forster says, “but if I ever took a big trip like this again, I’d 100 percent work with an expert.”  

When to Consider Using a Travel Agent

For savvy trip planners, the best time to use a travel agent is for complicated international travel. It can save you hours of planning and peace of mind that if anything goes wrong in your chosen far-flung destination, there’s someone a What’sApp message away to handle it.

Domestically, I’d consider using a travel agent when planning a multi-week national park trip or multi-island trip in Hawaii. They will save you time, guarantee you get the best guides, and help you land reservations at always-booked lodges and hotels.

Dream Trips Delivered

Jessica Cook and her husband both work in the travel industry. Decision fatigued, they handed their honeymoon logistics over to the team at Askari Travel , an agency that specializes in South Africa. Their original plan was also an African safari, but just as they were about to put a deposit down, the Omicron variant of the coronavirus made headlines. Worried about getting stuck abroad, they reached out to Askari’s founder, Muriel Truter, who is from Zimbabwe, and upon her advice, changed their focus to South America.

Knowledge is priceless, and advisers act as your insiders. They know what you don’t and fill in the blanks of things you might not even have considered.

Truter suggested they stick to Colombia rather than country-hop. Cook supplied a budget and a wish list: 12 days, no more than three destinations, a barefoot-luxe feel, and adventures like horseback riding and mountain biking. The rest was a surprise that Askari pretty much nailed, with the exception of one hotel.

“Everything felt so authentic, but this one hotel on Barú island felt really fabricated and was full of American tourists,” recalls Cook. She immediately messaged the Askari team, saying, “Hey, this place really isn’t our vibe,” and within an hour they were on a water taxi headed to Blue Apple, a B Corp hotel—and an Outside pick for tropical adventures —on Tierra Bomba island. “It was honestly the best trip we’ve ever taken,” she says.

Are Travel Agents Expensive?

It depends. Cost varies. Some travel agencies won’t charge any fee, as they receive a commission from the bookings, while some high-end agencies will charge pricey annual membership fees for their services. Still others charge nominal “professional” fees starting at $150. Fees often fluctuate based on the length and intricacy of a trip and how far out you do the planning (6 to 12 months is recommended). You may occasionally come across agents who charge a percentage of the total trip price or hourly rates.

Basic travel enquiries are generally free. In 2016, Leah Smith, founder of Tafari Travel , opened an old-school brick-and-mortar location in Denver’s Cherry Creek neighborhood so her services would feel less intimidating to first-time users. “With our retail-office location, we’ve become part of the community, and both clients and non-clients are welcome to pop in and ask whatever questions they may have, no charge,” she says.

Matt Lindsay, founder of the surf-guiding and travel company LuxSurf Travel , builds relationships with resorts and property owners to get discounted rates that he can then pass on to guests.

Dominic Allan, the founder of Real Latin America , specializes in travel to Belize and Nicaragua and caters to independent travelers who are happy to book their own flights and hotels but are seeking his local intel. Allan’s three-tier pricing structure starts at $300 for up to three hours of phone calls, during which he might weigh in on where to eat (or not to), the best room to request in a certain lodge, or whether you really need a guide to hike.

Value Versus Savings

If you’re just looking for deals and steals, you might not be ready to work with a travel adviser, says Richter of the ASTA. “Anything you invest in with a travel adviser comes back to you in the form of amenities, customer service, peace of mind, better access to unique experiences, and handcrafted itineraries,” she says. “You could save money by cutting your own hair, too, but most people go to someone who knows what they’re doing.”

Agents work with preferred partners who can guarantee perks for clients, such as free upgrades, early check-in or late check-out, and resort credits. Those add-ons often translate into savings, says Justin Huxter, cofounder of the UK-based Cartology Travel . “We had a client go to Maui for a week, and because of our partnership with the resort, breakfast was included,” he says. When breakfast costs $120 for two, that’s a savings of $840.”

Some of the Best Travel Agents in the Adventure World

Some of my go-to resources for finding a person to work with include travel expert Wendy Perrin’s annual Wow List of tried and trusted agents, the Adventure Travel Trade Association’s adviser network , and the ASTA’s advisor directory .

In addition to the agents mentioned throughout this story, others I highly recommend for adventurous travelers include:

• Dan Achber of Trufflepig , for Africa and the Middle East
• Miguel Cunant of Sri Lanka in Style
• Javier Echecopar of Journey Costa Rica
• Daniel Fraser of Smiling Albino , for Southeast Asia
• Elizabeth Gordon of Extraordinary Journeys , for Africa
• Kleon Howe of the Art of Travel , for French Polynesia
• Jay Johnson of Coastline Travel , for Hawaii and California
• Antonello Losito of Southern Visions Travel , for Puglia, Italy
• Rabia Malik of Fora Travel , for general worldwide travel
• Robyn Mark of Mayamaya Travel , for Africa, the Alps, Patagonia, and Japan
• Marisol Mosquera of Aracari , for Peru and Bolivia
• Zach Rabinor of Journey Mexico
• Raluca Spiac of Beyond Dracula , for Romania

Travel-advice columnist Jen Murphy is now a believer in using a travel agent. Thanks to their expertise and connections, she’s avoided dozens of trip catastrophes. 

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Travel agents making a comeback

Fed up with the time and complexity of online booking, and feeling that they're not finding the best deals, some travelers are turning back to travel agents.

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The complimentary wine and fruit platter was sent up to Jessica Griffin and her family moments after they strolled into their roomy suite. They were accompanied by a bellhop who placed their bags near a tidy crib made up with luxurious, high thread-count sheets for Griffin’s 1-year-old daughter.

The VIP treatment at the Cheeca Lodge and Spa in the Florida Keys last month hadn’t come with an extra cost. In fact, Griffin said, she paid about $100 a night less than the standard rate for her room. And the deal wasn’t the result of hours of tedious online research either. She had finagled her savings the old-fashioned way: through a travel agent.

“I needed recommendations and someone to steer me in the right direction,” said Griffin, who opted to work with an agent after years of making her own reservations because she needed a getaway suitable for a toddler and had little interest in scrolling through endless and conflicting user hotel reviews online. “There are so many,” she said. And with every site displaying beautiful pictures and tantalizing offers, “it can be overwhelming.”

“I wanted somebody from a reputable agency who could say yes, you’ll enjoy this stay,” she said.

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According to those in the travel agent industry, clients like Griffin are not alone, and are in fact helping to stanch the bloodletting the industry has experienced since the onset of DIY booking more than a decade ago. Nearly one in three leisure agencies is hiring, according to PhoCusWright, a travel research firm. And in 2011 travel agencies experienced a second consecutive year of growth; their bookings account for a third of the $284 billion United States travel market.

This comes after years during which all signs seemed to be suggesting that travel agents would soon go the way of telex operators. And it’s true that the numbers are stark: During the industry’s peak years of the mid-1990s, there were about 34,000 retail locations booking trips. Today, there are 14,000 to 15,000, according to PhoCusWright. In 2009 alone, in the throes of the recession, bookings through traditional agencies plummeted by 23 percent.

But now, some green shoots. An improving economy and the corporate travel that goes with it seem to be converging with a population for whom booking travel online has become increasingly onerous and time-consuming. Just how time-consuming? Steve Peterson, the global travel and transportation leader for the IBM Institute for Business Value, set out to answer that very question. In a survey of more than 2,000 travelers worldwide, 20 percent said it took them more than five hours to search and book travel online. Nearly half said it required more than two hours.

No one expects agency business to rebound to pre-Internet levels, but recent signs — like the fact that leisure travelers accounted for a 10 percent bump in sales in 2010 (a bit less in 2011) — suggest that agents can still play a relevant role. And though no one has been keeping track of the reasons travelers are turning to actual human beings, Peterson suspected it might have something to do with the drawbacks of the Web.

“It’s come to a point that it’s too much information to be confident that they have the ability to book the lowest fare,” or uncover the best place to stay, he said of the respondents. “Consumers are hungry for that one-and-done shopping experience.”

New breed of travel agents

As it turns out, after years of losing ground to online sites, a new breed of tech savvy, specialized and collaborative agent has emerged.

“This whole idea that I go to a travel adviser to tell me what to do — those days are long gone,” said Matthew Upchurch, the chief executive of Virtuoso, a network of more than 330 upscale agencies. A contemporary travel agent expects customers to have done their homework, he said: “You’ve done a lot of research, now how do we work together?”

Agents today also know they must set themselves apart from the Web by offering special experiences that consumers can’t easily get on their own, like after-hours tours of the Sistine Chapel, tee times on PGA golf courses normally closed to the public or the ability to pull some strings to get clients into that sold-out hotel or on the next flight out when bad weather strikes.

Such services often come with fees that range widely from $25 to book an airline ticket to $12,000 annual retainers. But even for budget travelers, the overall experience can offer better value, as my colleague Seth Kugel found in a recent test of agents versus online search engines. Agents won “nearly every time,” he wrote, “on both price (the objective part of the test) and service (what you might call the essay question). In other words, the agents suggested alternate routes, gave advice on visas and just generally acted, well, more human than their computer counterparts.”

Comfortable with technology and accustomed to information on demand, new agents respond to clients around the clock through text, email, cellphone and Twitter. And when they are not inspecting new hotels or touring the latest cruise ship, they are often blogging about recent trips or posting their photos to Facebook. Having grown up booking their own travel online, they understand the skepticism new clients may have about whether an agent can do any better and look for opportunities to wow them.

Return of the travel agents: The package holiday is making a comeback

All-inclusive trips booked by travel agents are rising in popularity as holidaymakers seek security.

After the second World War, the notion that a humble Irish person would travel to lounge by an infinity pool before returning home tanned and chilled was as unimaginable as having the dinner without potatoes. Photograph: Agency

A decade ago it looked like the game was up for travel agents after more than 150 years in the sun. But while big players like JWT and Thomas Cook have gone to the great Club Tropicana in the sky, the chaos of the pandemic and the travel sector’s capacity for reinvention has seen it – improbably – bounce back.*

It would be overstating it to suggest it’s all plain sailing for Ireland’s travel agents now, but a bumper start to 2023 suggests the rollercoaster ride that has lasted more than 150 years has a few twists in it yet.

That rollercoaster started slowly, back in 1841, when Thomas Cook offered his first holiday package. Looking at it now, the 11-mile train journey from Leicester to a temperance meeting in Loughborough doesn’t sound like much craic, not really worth the shilling he charged, but every journey starts with a single step... or a slow moving steam train.

By 1844 Cook was off again, taking people from Leicester to Liverpool, a round-trip of about 240 miles, and by 1855 his wanderlust had spread wider as he ferried folk to Paris via Antwerp, Brussels, Cologne, Heidelberg and Strasbourg.

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The high cost of travel and the impoverished state of us – and a couple of world wars – slowed the growth of leisure travel, and for the 100 years that followed, it was exclusive to the mega rich and the poets and dreamers looking to go from here to there on a shoestring.

Things started to take off – literally – with the end of the second World War, and the dramatic improvement in air travel fuelled by wartime technologies retooled for leisure travel. But even then, international jet-setting remained the preserve of the rich, and the notion that a humble Irish person would travel to Spain or Africa or an idyllic Indian Ocean island to lounge by an infinity pool sipping wine (wine of all things!) before returning home tanned and chilled was as unimaginable as having the dinner without potatoes.

More than a decade ago independent bookings started to outstrip travel agency bookings and things looked bleak. Photograph: Getty

But the world was opening up. The first modern-day package holiday was organised in 1950 by Horizon Holidays which flew British tourists to Corsica, and in 1955 a company called Wings started selling two-week packages from the UK to Portugal for 49 guineas – or €1,400 in today’s money. British European Airways – later to become BA – was not having it, probably because it was offering return air fares to Lisbon for about €1,500. It used its influence with the British government to ensure that Wings was fatally clipped.

By the 1980s sun holidays were almost commonplace, as tour operators and travel agencies made hay at home by selling sun far away. Joe Walsh Tours flew pale Irish people with a few bob to Sitges, south of Barcelona and Benidorm before flying them, tanned and sometimes lobster red, home again a fortnight later. In the 1980s Budget Travel was born and made holidays even more accessible.

It was a golden age for travel agents who popped up on every street corner. But then the internet and a little known EU policy known as Open Skies – allowing for unlimited air travel between EU airports, and to anywhere in the US – came along and everything changed utterly.

Less than 30 years ago the idea that Ryanair could challenge tour operators was laughable, but Open Skies broke the flag-carrying airlines’ monopoly and while low-cost carriers focused first on big cities, they soon followed the money and flew to the sun spots too.

Suddenly arranging a two-week holiday on the cheap was not only possible, it was simple. People had direct access to hotels and resorts and were facilitated by platforms such as TripAdvisor, Booking.com and hundreds more. Then there was Airbnb. More than a decade ago independent bookings started to outstrip travel agency bookings and things looked bleak.

But the agencies held their own and, while many closed, many more adapted.

It may be that the pandemic – which could have been the death of them – will turn out to be the making of them instead. With international travel reduced to levels not seen since Thomas Cook’s heyday, the sector went into a tailspin and scrambled to survive. But then it proved its worth. People who had booked flights, accommodation and car hire independently struggled to get home and to get refunds. By contrast, those who had booked package deals were largely protected, and able to roll bookings over from 2020 into 2021 and often into 2022.

But the security doesn’t kick in only in the event of a global pandemic; booking with a travel agent also gives you the knowledge you are covered in the event of missed connections, airline failures, or repatriation if there is a problem travelling.

That sense of security should things go wrong is said by multiple travel industry sources to be behind the resurgence in the sector, which has seen its value soar. According to the Commission for Aviation Regulation, Ireland’s tour operators and travel agents had turnover of €1.3 billion last year, less than the independent travel sector but still pretty robust.

“Consumers are still booking independently, but they are also booking with travel agents and as a sector we are very much alive,” says Paul Hackett, president of the Irish Travel Agents Association (ITAA) and owner of online travel agency Click & Go.

“The draw is service and speaking to a real person,” he says. “There is one point of contact and one person responsible for your holiday. Think back to Covid. If you had booked everything yourself, you were on your own chasing refunds, but with travel agents there was one point of contact. People also value service and experience as well as the protection. And they are getting that for the same price as doing it themselves, so why bother with DIY?”

When The Irish Times pushes back on the price point and suggests that surely the DIY model is cheaper, Hackett is adamant. “We are buying in bulk and linked into bed banks. The hotels might say book direct for the best deals, but that is not always the case because the suppliers book thousands of rooms. The hotels simply can’t rely on direct bookings.”

He points to one particular all-inclusive couples deal in Majorca for the summer, priced at €499 per person. “There is just no way you could match that price by doing it yourself.”

We gave it a go. The cost of the room for two adults for the same dates in May when booked independently came in at just over €694 on an all-inclusive basis. The flights for two to Palma with Aer Lingus, meanwhile, came in at €413, taking our total to €1,107 or €553 per person, and that’s without connections.

So, that’s 1-0 to the travel agents.

Hackett also highlights the option of paying a deposit to secure a holiday, and points out that would-be holiday makers can secure a holiday for as little as a euro and pay it off in stages. Such bookings can also include a degree of peace of mind – particularly in an era of rising prices – with the cost agreed months in advance and elements such as baggage and transfers included.

Speaking of prices, he acknowledges that they have jumped on 2019 levels. “This year will be in line with last year, but 10-20 per cent more than 2019. That is because of higher input costs up and down the supply line, from aviation fuel to the costs faced by hotels and restaurants.”

He says people are booking earlier this year, and are more “flexible and looking for destination with the best value for the money”.

And where might that be? “In the summer it is the Canary Islands because they are open 12 months and can aggressively price for the summer.”

While Hackett will obviously highlight the positives of package holidays, there are negatives too. For many holidaymakers the experience lacks authenticity, and it can be harder to get off the beaten track, although there are agencies that actively facilitate that type of travel.

Travel agents also insist that because they buy in bulk, customers get better value and while that can be true in many circumstances, it is not always the case, particularly if you are flying to airports well served by low-cost carriers. And the protection piece – while important – can be overstated, and good travel insurance is cheap and covers most people for most eventualities.

Cassidy Travel has been selling Irish people holidays for 38 years, and last year recorded its best year ever. This January also proved to be the busiest start to a year. Director John Spollen says security has been key to driving bookings, although he insists there’s more to it. “We have been here for such a long time that we have a rapport with most suppliers and have preferential rates. Then there’s the convenience. It is a hassle-free and time-saving way of planning and booking.”

Claire Doherty of the Travel Department has also seen business bounce back faster than anticipated. “We’re not above pre-pandemic levels, but we’re not far off. We didn’t think long haul would recover as quickly as it has, but Egypt, South Africa, the US and Canada are selling well.”

For the Travel Department, which specialises in guided trips, Europe is by far the big seller with Italy, Croatia, Slovenia and Romania particularly popular.

Like Spollen, Doherty reckons security has been key to driving bookings in post-pandemic times, although she is not certain how long that shift in mindset will last.

“We have seen it happen before. We found that after 9/11 or the ash cloud, people realised that when something went wrong, they were on their own if they had booked online. So there was a surge in bookings, but then some went back to booking themselves.”

Covid might, she says, prove to be a more enduring shift. “It was so big and it affected everyone and there are so many stories of people being out of pocket because they didn’t book with a travel agency. I don’t think travel agents will ever disappear, and there will always be people who understand their importance and the fact that the assurances are there and we are bonded and people will not be out of pocket.”

She also says it is “a myth” that agents are more expensive. “We get better rates because we buy in bulk and can pass that on to our customers and you are getting expertise and advice from trained professionals. Our staff are not just pulled in off the street and they have years of experience. You can pick somewhere off the web, but it is not the same.”

Packages worth a look

Vampire week.

A common complaint about travel agents is they don’t allow you take the road less travelled. Well, what about a week in Romania passing through imposing mountains, dense forests and medieval towns?

The courtyard of the Bran Castle, Bran, in Transylvania, Romania. Photograph: Getty

This package includes nights in Sighisoara and Sainaia, Brasov and Bucharest, as well as the chance to follow in the footsteps of Vlad Dracula on guided tours of the town where he was born.

Starting from €1,049 including flights, transfers, tours and mix of half-board and B&B accommodation. traveldepartment.com

Yes to the Camino

If you would like to find yourself on the pilgrim’s path to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia but don’t know where to start, this bespoke package might be worth a look. Pilgrims enjoy a meet and greet on arrival before being transferred to their hotel to join the group for a welcome dinner. Then it’s time to set off on a self-guided Camino journey with departure dates on the French, Portuguese and Celtic Camino ways.

Standing on the main square in Santiago de Compostela at the end of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage. Photograph: iStock

Starting from €649 per person including flights, accommodation on a B&B basis, transfers and guides. uwalk.ie

Lazing in Lagos

The Algarve remains one of the most popular destinations for Irish people with ease of access, glorious weather and comparatively low prices among the big draws. There are an endless number of packages and deals on offer.

Lagos is very popular with the Irish holidaymaker. Photograph: iStock

This one offers self-catering accommodation in Lagos for two adults and two (small) children. The apartment is 600m from the beaches, 800m from the town centre and 80km from Faro airport.

A fortnight for four including accommodation and flights in the middle of June came in at €3,212. sunway.ie

Maybe Mallorca

Holidays on the Balearic Islands have been particularly popular with Irish people for generations, and the set-up there makes a holiday largely effortless. If you are looking for guaranteed sunshine, easy access to beaches and pools and cheap food and drink, you could do worse than checking out Mallorca. The trick is to find a resort with the most stars you can afford. The Inturotel Sa Marina in Santanyi is a five star option that looks pretty swish.

Inturotel Sa Marina, Santanyi, Mallorca

A week in June for a family of four was €2,070 at the time of writing, including Ryanair flights and a fairly small but okay looking apartment. cassidytravel.ie

Lazing in Lanzarote

With its year-round holiday market, the Canaries are not under so much pressure to make all their money in the summer season so there are deals on the table. The Volcan Lanzarote Hotel looks gorgeous with its low-rise accommodation, swanky pools and adults-only option if you want to steer clear of the sounds of children laughing – and moaning – while you lounge in the sun.

Two weeks in June including flights and accommodation were coming in at €1,293 per person, or €2,585 for a couple, which works out at €184 per day. clickandgo.com

* This article was edited on February 27th to remove a reference to Budget Travel – the original Budget Travel company went into liquidation and ceased trading in 2009. The name was bought by Club Travel and the company has been trading under the Budget Travel name in the Irish market since 2010.

Conor Pope is Consumer Affairs Correspondent, Pricewatch Editor and cohost of the In the News podcast

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2023 Travel Agency Trends: Making a Comeback

More than ever before, consumers are using a trusted travel agent to help plan and coordinate their vacations. The travel industry is booming, and with more and more Americans utilizing travel advisors to book their getaways, there are so many  franchise success stories  to share. The fast-paced travel industry is always changing; here are some travel agency trends to watch for the present and near future.

Travel Agencies Are Thriving

There are so many benefits for a customer working with a travel advisor. With extensive experience and access to the best values, a travel agent is a truly invaluable tool. Across the board, the trend in the travel industry is that customers are looking for more support and care during and prior to their vacations.

Travel advisors from a tourism franchise have the knowledge and skills to help travelers make the right choices. In a world where wellness and self-care are becoming a priority, consumers are relying on travel agents to save time and alleviate stress.

Travel Agency Trends in 2023

Many travelers desire someone to lead the way during long international trips. However, consumers are increasingly using travel agencies for various vacation types, such as river cruises and voyages featuring celebrity chefs. In fact, according to the American Express survey, 47% of Gen-Z and Millennial respondents have planned an entire trip to visit a specific restaurant.

The rise of social media and its influence on tourism have also shown signs of powerful growth. The American Express survey also reports that 75% of respondents want to travel to a destination after seeing it on social media, and 48% want to travel somewhere they can show off on social media. One of the key components of how to be a successful travel agent is having a strong digital presence. 

Showing off destinations and deals and establishing yourself as an expert in travel will inspire followers to book a getaway. One of the exciting benefits of becoming a Dream Vacations travel agency franchise owner is that you’ll have access to incredible tools to help you connect with your customers digitally – like professionally-produced videos and an automated social post-program.

Becoming a Travel Franchise Owner

According to recent travel agency trends, leisure vacations and sightseeing remain a top priority for many Americans. If you’re interested in becoming a travel professional and helping guide people on their own getaways, Dream Vacations is one of the best franchises to own in 2023 for travel lovers. Join us at our next webinar or call us at 800-892-3928 to learn more about starting a career as a travel franchise owner.

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Are Travel Agents Really Making a Comeback?

• Comprehensive travel agency market sizing, including leisure and corporate sectors, and analysis by segment – air, hotel, cruise, car, tour and rail
• Composition and structure of the travel agency marketplace, examining the total number of agency locations, the travel agent population, the mix of leisure and corporate agencies and travel agency affiliations (consortia)
• Assessment of the growing home-based travel agent phenomenon
• Travel agency product selection and booking methods, including the role of GDSs, supplier websites, mobile devices and other online resources and platforms
• The rising average age of travel agents and potential market implications
• Trends and key market developments in the U.S. travel agency landscape

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Will Travel Agents Make a Comeback in a Post-COVID-19 World?

After the last couple of years coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s probably safe to say that we could all use a vacation right about now! To travel overseas, relax at a beach resort or curl up in mountainous area and enjoy the views. Most people will say traveling is one of their hobbies, and many of us love planning our vacation itineraries as we want to experience the joy of getting out of our mundane routines for a change.  

How Did the Coronavirus Pandemic Affect Travel Agents?  

The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic not only cancelled and delayed our travel plans, but it also had a massive impact on the travel industry. The World Travel and Tourism Council, which represents major global travel agencies, projects a global employment loss of 75 million jobs and a financial loss of $2.1 trillion in revenue .  

Now that travel borders are open for tourists around the world, many people are ready to travel but face much conflicting information regarding the travel rules and restrictions online when making plans on their own. That is why people who previously booked and planned their itinerary on their own are resorting to travel agents to plan, book, and advise them on their travel plans.   

According to a 2020 study by a British tech tourism company, travelers are likely to book their travels through an agent than on their own due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a 33% rise in travel agent services offered to tourists. As the landscape continues to shift rapidly, the current job market for travel agents is difficult to predict but we are seeing promising improvement from the preceding years and expect that trend to continue. Currently, the employment of travel agents is projected to grow 5% from 2020 to 2030 . Despite this being a bit slower than average for most other occupations, there are about 7,500 openings for travel agents annually, on average, over the decade.   

What Do Travel Agents Do?  

A travel agent is an individual whose job is to arrange travel for end clients (such as individuals, companies, and groups) on behalf of suppliers (such as airlines and hotels). There are numerous benefits of engaging a travel agent in a post-COVID world, including:  

• They advise their clients about the SOPs that need to be followed at all times.  
• With fluctuating travel restrictions, only a travel agent can advise on what restrictions are imposed on a client’s travel plans.  
• Great agents can fast-track U.S. nationals through airport immigration as otherwise, there are huge lines at immigration desks around the world due to the pandemic.  
• Having a travel agent can allow clients to get refunds from hotels and airlines without any hiccups. These cancellations are common in the COVID-19 era as governments around the world are restricting tourist influx to curb the spread of the virus.  

Is a Travel Agent Career Right for You?  

If you are passionate about traveling, having a travel agent career could be the right choice for you. The average travel agent salary was $42,350 in 2020. Additionally, most travel agents get great discounts when they make travel plans. Furthermore, during the pandemic, people are increasingly reliant on travel agents.   

A good travel agent will help clients to make reservations for hotels, air tickets, car transportation, and support visa and passport requirements for the country the client plans to visit. During the pandemic, these agents have gone a step ahead by ensuring their clients follow all SOPs and are aware of any travel restriction changes around the world. This means you can help more clients fulfill their travel dreams, safely.  

How to Become a Travel Agent  

The first step to becoming a travel agent is to earn an industry-recognized certification. There are many specialized certification courses that you may access online. With the right training, you will be able to kickstart your journey as a travel agent. Most of these courses only require a high school degree to enroll.  

Travel Agent Certification Course  

In this six-month-long online Travel Agent Training course, you will learn about the domestic and international travel industry, including airline and ground transportation, accommodation, tours, cruises, specialty travel, and more. You will also explore techniques to market your services and improve customer service skills.  

Once you complete this course, you will be able to sit for the Travel Agent Proficiency (TAP) test offered by Travel Institute, a certifying body for travel professionals. You will also become eligible to connect with Travel Placement Services (TPS) agent.  

You can study at your own pace and complete 100-course hours, after which you will be ready to start your travel agent career. The best part is that you do not need any prior travel agent experience to enroll in this course. The certification has all the tools to equip you with the necessary skills, knowledge, and aptitude to deal with travel challenges in the post-COVID world. Enroll now to get started!

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Travel is Making a Comeback, and We’re Helping Our Customers Lead the Way

As the travel industry rebounds in a post-covid world, no one is better equipped to help travel brands acquire customers and monetize site visitors than mediaalpha.

As Americans continue to get vaccinated in growing numbers, more and more of them are choosing to satisfy their pent-up demand for travel. This past Memorial Day weekend, more than 7 million people flew out of U.S. airports, signaling a major return for airline, hotel, and car rental brands.

Now that travel demand is once again on the rise, travel companies across the country have a major opportunity to jumpstart their businesses and make up for the losses they’ve endured throughout the pandemic. And whether you’re a travel advertiser looking to acquire new customers or a publisher working to monetize the shoppers who visit your website, there’s no better place to take advantage of this opportunity than MediaAlpha.

While our travel business took a hit during the pandemic, our diversified company was able to withstand a difficult year and continue growing. Throughout this turbulence, we’ve continued working on our platform and learning from the insights that have been developed by our peers in our insurance vertical. Today, we’re proud to offer the travel industry’s most precise, most transparent, and most powerful platform for customer acquisition. And we can’t wait to help our customers bounce back from challenging circumstances.

Our size and scale allowed us to weather the storm—now, we’re building for the future

One of our great strengths as a business is the scale of our platform and the diversity of the businesses who use it to maximize the value of every consumer interaction. Each year, our platform handles more than $800 million in transactions, across verticals such as travel, health insurance, Medicare, life insurance, personal finance, education, and property and casualty insurance.

Not only does this allow us to withstand cyclical downturns in any one industry, it also gives us the resources and experience we need to continuously improve our platform. Because of the breadth of our business, we’re able to see what works and what doesn’t across a range of industries, as well as to more quickly identify new features we can add to make our offering more impactful for our customers. During the pandemic, we’ve been perfecting our predictive analytics capability , which allows travel brands to more efficiently monetize their website visitors by using their historical data to predict how different kinds of customers will behave in the future.

Our platform offers travel brands better transparency, more granularity, and greater scale than any other platform

Coming out of the dark days of the pandemic, we’re proud to offer a customer acquisition platform that is the clear market leader in the travel sector. Indeed, at a time when many travel advertisers have reduced budgets due to the losses they absorbed during the pandemic, it’s never been more important to ensure that every penny is spent strategically to generate the greatest possible performance. Only MediaAlpha offers travel brands the transparency, granularity, and scale they need to achieve results in this crucial moment.

It all starts with the transparency that has always been fundamental to our company’s success. Simply put, no one passes more data to travel advertisers than we do. While other platforms in our space ask travel brands to put their money into a black box, we provide full insight into the exact publisher the ad is running on, as well as the channel the consumer arrived from. This way, our partners can better understand their performance and make intelligent adjustments to improve it moving forward.

That’s where our industry-leading granularity comes into play. We empower travel advertisers to adjust their targeting parameters and bid prices based on a wide range of variables that other platforms don’t, including referral source, days to arrival, and length of trip. This allows our partners to target the right audiences and pay the right price for every consumer.

While travel brands sometimes expect to compromise scale in order to achieve performance, we offer the best of both worlds. With the industry’s largest collection of supply and demand, both advertisers and publishers can grow their businesses at the speed necessary to rebound from a global pandemic. Our scale also gives us a broad overview of the travel customer acquisition marketplace, which in turn allows our customer service team to provide data-driven insights and suggestions that help our partners optimize.

Ready to start rebuilding your business in a post-pandemic world? We’re here to help.

As the travel industry continues its post-pandemic comeback, advertisers and publishers will need to be as efficient as ever in how they capitalize on a flood of new shoppers. The companies that will grow during this period will be the ones who are capable of making and executing granular, strategic decisions at scale.

If you’re a MediaAlpha customer looking to develop the best approach for capitalizing on travel’s big comeback, our client success team is always available to sit down for a strategy session. And if you’re not a MediaAlpha customer yet, we’d love to start working with you. Schedule a demo with us today and learn what the market leader in travel customer acquisition can do for you.

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(CNN) -- If you've booked travel online, you may have been there.

Nancy Cutter, a travel agent in Charlotte, North Carolina, discusses vacation options with a client.

Online travel sites flooded with overwhelming options, all claiming the best deals. Extra fees nestled into the fine print amid blaring advertisements. Pounding 16 digits into the telephone after you've booked the wrong flight before finally getting a human voice.

A few weeks ago, Darin Kaplan, a tech-savvy 27-year-old California restaurant manager, clicked his mouse hundreds of times, surfing the vast choices offered by online travel booking Web sites like Expedia.com and Orbitz.com to plan his 28th birthday cruise to Mexico before he gave up in frustration.

"It's a cut-and-paste experience when you're booking online. None of these sites are going to tell me what I can do with different options," said Kaplan, who uses the Internet for many purchases, including his basketball shorts and music tickets. "Travel agents know what they are talking about. It's more comforting to hand my money to someone who has the knowledge and experience."

Some travelers like Kaplan are finding themselves defecting from travel booking sites like Travelocity.com or airline sites like Delta.com. They are going back the travel agent, an industry that many industry experts once thought to be passé with the advent of online booking.

Fewer travelers are enjoying using the Web to plan and buy trips, according to a study last week by Forrester Research, a market research company. About 46 percent of U.S. leisure travelers enjoyed using the Internet to book travel this year, down from 53 percent in 2007.

Difficult site navigation and presentation on travel company sites and hotel and airline sites are causing a growing number of travelers to shift away from the Web and consider using alternative methods of booking travel.

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"People are saying 'I don't understand my options, and I would like to talk to someone who can do all the searching and tell me what's available,' " said Henry Hartevelt, the analyst who wrote the Forrester study. "Major travel agencies have absolutely failed in their responsibility to innovate and think of creative new ways to help their customers shop."

In the brick-and-mortar travel agent model, a trained agent meets with the traveler in person or establishes a relationship over the phone. For a fee, they discuss the travel options they have researched.

These travel agencies began losing their monopoly on the industry during the late 1990s, when airlines began to sell tickets online and travel giants like Expedia.com exploded onto the scene, quickly gobbling market share by introducing the quick, do-it- yourself model.

In 1995, there were 37,000 brick-and-mortar travel agencies, according to the American Society of Travel Agents. Now, only 18,000 exist after many merged or folded.

"What the Internet has done is given us a nation that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing," said Bill Maloney, CEO of the American Society of Travel Agents. "How do you know if a hotel is actually a good value or if it's overpriced? You have these online generalists and these individual specialists."

Travel agent Nancy Cutter of Court Travel Ltd. in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a half-dozen other agencies across the country say they have experienced a surge in returning clients, who said travel Web sites were confusing and unhelpful.

In several instances, brick-and-mortar agents say they were able to offer deals at the same price as, and even undercut, the travel agent models, dispelling the belief that the cheapest rate is online.

Travel agents have deals with suppliers that can sometimes enable them to offer lower prices than on the Web. They also have time to cancel tickets for free, compared with some non-refundable tickets sold on the Web. Expedia.com said it recently waived the fee for travelers changing certain flights.

"Just because you can go out and buy Turbo Tax doesn't mean it's the best answer for everyone," Cutter said. "Some people will still go to an accountant. Booking travel can get complicated, and it's just not as easy as it looks."

Travel agents don't discount the value of online travel agencies, which can be useful for booking simple, short trips, but they say complex itineraries require more expertise from a professional. Many online travel companies agree that an agent may be valuable in planning a detailed honeymoon that includes a tour of vineyards in France or a family excursion to top snorkeling and kangaroo-watching destinations in Australia.

"If you're the type of traveler who needs hand-holding up front, then sure, a travel agent would be great, but you can usually find that same information on the Web," said Brian Ek, a spokesman for Priceline.com, a travel company famous for letting bidders set their own price. He said the agents available by phone at his company can help facilitate a sale and customize cruises for travelers.

Online travel companies say they have made functionality improvements on their sites in recent years. For example, Expedia.com, the world's largest online travel agency, offers a tool that can let customers compare seats on an airplane, with ratings on how comfortable a seat is and how much leg room is available. They also have hotel reviews and even Web tours of rooms to help travelers decide.

And, research shows that online travel model is poised to grow. Even in a recession, when companies and individuals are scaling back on travel, Expedia.com saw a 22 percent air transaction growth rate in the last quarter.

But Susan D. Tanzman of Martin's Travel and Tours in California, who has worked as an agent for 35 years, points out that agents follow up with travelers before and after the trip. If the traveler needs help, the agency can offer assistance. They often work 24 hours a day.

JoAnne Kochneff, owner of midsize agency Travel by Gagnon in Michigan, said agents can give the personal attention a site cannot. Kochneff's office provides a homey feel, with agents offering freshly baked cookies for clients who stop by to chat about their trips.

"They have personal experience traveling in the area, so they can give you a personal recommendation," said Frances Mosser, 67, of Kentucky, on her reason why she switched to the travel agent model this summer.

Mosser and her husband booked a trip to St. Melo in France with a travel agent. The agent helped them devise a way to reduce travel time by taking Ryan Air between countries.

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From the Blogs: Controversy, commentary, and debate

Sit tight, we're getting to the good stuff.

Local travel agent says industry making a comeback

by JOY ADDISON

SOUTHEAST TEXAS — Travel agents say their industry is making a comeback after suffering a decline of nearly 40 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the U.S. Travel Association.

Barbara Boone, an affiliate with Direct Travel, says she thinks the uptick in travel booking is due to the arrival and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine.

She says most travelers are taking advantage of cheap rates and booking ahead while others are making up for lost time.

KFDM/Fox 4's Joy Addison reports.

Why you should use a travel agent

Next time you travel somewhere, consider talking to a professional first.

That's what Seth Beckerman did when he needed to plan a recent trip around the world. His travel agent, Joe Kiernan, charged him a $35 consulting fee to create a seamless itinerary and was on call to make sure everything fell in place. And when it didn't, he quickly fixed it.

"When I was stranded in the Auckland airport because of a missed connection and Air New Zealand balked at accommodating me, I called Joe," says Beckerman, a retired editor from Pittsburgh. "He made it happen."

I know what you're thinking: Here comes another story about how travel agents are making a comeback.

Except they're not. The number of travel agents has shriveled from 124,000 in 2000 to 74,100 in 2014, according to the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics. But that's good news. Many of the mundane tasks travel agents used to do, such as writing airline tickets, have been automated by travel websites. Today's travel professional is far likelier to have expertise, knowledge and deep connections that can ensure your trip is a smooth one.

Five myths about travel agents

But agents are not for everyone. Ian MacDonald, an entrepreneur from Toronto, stopped using a travel agent when he added a $75 consulting fee to his services. MacDonald went the do-it-yourself route and has no regrets.

"It is easy, fast and has saved me thousands of dollars," he says.

For years, travel agents privately scoffed at the DIYers, deriding them as "amateurs" and calling the sites they used, such as Expedia and Priceline, "travel vending machines." But the real professionals have shed that attitude and are zeroing in on a more positive message. Yes, there are lots of folks such as MacDonald out there, and most of them will be just fine planning their own simple trips. But if you ever need an expert, agents will be there, ready to help.

“The value of a travel agent is immeasurable," says Annie Scrivanich, a senior vice president for Cruise Specialists, a Seattle-based travel agency. Today's travel agent is highly trained, well-traveled and has an extensive Rolodex of industry contacts, just in case they need to call in a favor. You'd have to spend half your free time online and the other half on the road to come close to that level of expertise.

Don't confuse confidence with arrogance. Years ago, before travel websites became popular, the only way to book a cruise or a complicated vacation such as a honeymoon was to go through an agency, and some agents behaved as if they were the only game in town. Now, they know they have to be more than order-takers who collect a commission check. They have to work for you, and their loyalty must be to you.

Here's the real shift: For the better part of two decades, travel agents claimed they worked for you but their loyalties remained with the suppliers, who paid them generous bonuses that covered their expenses. To many travelers, their words were compromised by conflict of interest. But last year, the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA), the largest professional organization for travel agents, stunned the travel world by shifting its focus to the consumer. It relaunched Travelsense.org , a consumer-facing website, and began promoting agents as advocates for the traveler.

A few weeks ago I had an opportunity to address an ASTA conference and meet with agents. I wanted to find out if this was for real or just another marketing gimmick. Most of the pros I spoke with told me what I've been waiting to hear for years: That they are agents for you , the traveler. If push came to shove, they'd throw a travel supplier under a high-speed train.

On my return from the conference, I had a chance to experience the benefits of an agent when I was stuck in New York on a stopover. My return flight to Orlando was canceled, and they couldn't get me back home for another 24 hours. While two codesharing airlines argued over who was responsible for the mess, my travel agent stepped up and found me a hotel and an early morning flight home.

Why airline codesharing must die

You can't go wrong by taking care of your customers. After years of precipitous declines, Americans are slowly discovering the new travel agent. According to consumer spending data from Bank of America, the average traveler spent $117 on agencies overall in 2016, up 4% from a year before.

The small number of travel professionals that remain still have a way to go before they can truly say they've returned. But when they do, they'll be working for you.

How to find the best agent

• Ask a friend. A personal recommendation remains the best way to find a competent travel professional. Make sure you do your due diligence before you go with an agent. Ask for a list of references and check to make sure they're licensed.

• Use an agent finder. The American Society of Travel Agents publishes a directory of its agents at Travelsense.org . Also, check a consortium such as Virtuoso ( virtuoso.com/advisors ), which specializes in luxury travel, or Travel Leaders, the largest traditional travel agency company ( travelleaders.com/travel_agent/find-a-travel-agent.aspx ).

• Look for the title. The Certified Travel Associate (CTA) and Certified Travel Counselor (CTC) designations issued by The Travel Institute ( thetravelinstitute.com ) are signs that your agent has taken the time to study up on the industry. Having these degrees is an indicator your agent is serious about being a professional.

Christopher Elliott is a consumer advocate and editor at large for National Geographic Traveler. Contact him at [email protected] or visit elliott.org .

Online Booking Is, Like, So '90s: The Humble Travel Agent Is Making a Comeback

It often happens on Mondays.

"I get calls from people who say ‘I spent all weekend online trying to work out a trip and this is exactly what I need,'" said travel consultant Sheri Doyle, the Seattle-based owner of Pacific Northwest Journeys .

Doyle, who specializes in creating itineraries for travelers heading to Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and beyond, finds that many of her clients are travelers frustrated by the overload of information on Expedia, TripAdvisor and other online travel sites and who want to be sure they are making good decisions about how to spend vacation days — and making good use of their time.

"It's time versus money. People find value in paying a fee for travel knowledge."

“It’s time versus money. A lot of people just don’t have the time or the expertise to plan a trip and do it well,” said Doyle, and they find value in paying a fee for the knowledge of someone who has actually stayed at the hotels, visited the sites and can negotiate good rates and extra perks.

Travelers who have found occasion to turn from the web to an agent include Alyne Ellis, a writer and radio producer from Washington D.C. who was planning a trip to Rome, Venice, and Croatia with her husband, who had never been to Europe.

Related: This Company Sends Travelers to Unknown Destinations

“We were overwhelmed with the logistics as we only had a few days in Rome and Venice and wanted to be near everything,” said Ellis. With the help of an agent, “We stayed in some of the nicest places ever and they all seemed very local in their feeling, at our request,” she said.

Karen Wickre, an internet industry veteran and founder of KVOX Media, relies on a travel adviser who can “see competitive pricing and scheduling,” when planning complex trips outside the U.S.

On a two-week, multi-city visit to Spain and Portugal, Wickre and a friend figured chose the hotels and length of stays in each city, but turned to the agent to book flights, trains, and airport transfers.

“All the travel documents and details were in one itinerary,” said Wickre, “They even have an app we could look at along the way. And it was easy to pay one bill to the agent.”

In 2015, 22 percent of consumers booked through a travel agent, the highest share reported in the past three years.

These experiences fit with the trend noted in a June 2016 report by the American Society of Travel Agents, which surveyed 14,000 U.S. households and found that, despite the rise of online travel agents (OTAs), in the previous year 22 percent of consumers booked through a travel agent, the highest share reported in the past three years.

In its most recent Portrait of American Travelers survey, travel industry research and marketing firm MMGY found the use of travel agents at a six-year high, with more than 9 million U.S. travelers planning to call on a travel professional to help book a trip this year.

“The higher the ticket price of the travel being purchased, the more likely they were to turn to a professional travel advisor,” noted the Travel Market Report in its review of the study.

“If anything, a good travel counselor is more relevant today than ever before,” said Grayce Walters, a travel agent with Maupin Travel that has a storefront in Raleigh, North Carolina.

“Ten years ago we were worried about the internet and all the sites that were popping up, but I’m seeing a lot more people — especially young people — who come to us when planning big trips,” said Walters. “Sometimes people say, ‘I can do it myself,’ but then they get into it, it gets complicated and they call me and are happy to pay a fee. When I save them money on the overall trip, I get a customer for life.”

Jack Ezon, a luxury leisure travel consultant with Ovation Travel, calls that the boomerang effect.

“There’s so much information out there that it makes it more difficult to do your own research now. So we serve as matchmakers, listening to clients, and finding what’s right for them,” said Ezon.

And, increasingly, ‘what’s right’ is also ‘special.’

“Younger millennials want the VIP treatment, to be on the other side of the velvet rope. Older millennials are planning honeymoons, having kids, and wanting to create unique experiences,” said Ezon. “And it’s not just millennials; increasingly, Baby Boomers and Gen Xers are acting like millennials and looking for savvy travel advisers who can make things happen.”

Harriet Baskas is an NBC News contributor who writes about travel and the arts.

Travel agents are making a comeback

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Don’t count travel agents out just yet.

Although online travel websites like Orbitz and Travelocity are now responsible about 70% of travel booking in the U.S., the folks who work out of brick-and-mortar travel agencies are reporting booming sales.

Travel agents say revenues, bookings and the total number of clients are up in the first half of 2014 compared with the same period last year, according to a survey by the American Society of Travel Agents, which represents nearly 6,000 travel agents across the country.

Of the agents questioned in the survey, 47% reported higher revenue, with 27% saying revenue has remained about the same as last year. Also, 45% reported more transactions this year, with 30% saying business has been about the same.

The surge in business for travel agents may be a sign that Americans—encouraged by an improved economy and higher home values—are turning to travel agents to plan more intricate vacations, according to travel agents.

“You book an airline seat or a hotel online,” said Jay Johnson, owner of Coastline Travel Advisors in Garden Grove. “But if you want to do something more exotic like go to Buton in Indonesia, you want to talk to an expert.”

The rising demand for travel agents prompted Johnson to hire two more employees in the last two weeks.

“We have never been so busy,” he said.

To read more about travel, tourism and the airline industry, follow me on Twitter at @hugomartin .

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Hugo Martín is an assistant editor on the Fast Break Desk, the Los Angeles Times’ breaking news team. He has been a journalist with the Los Angeles Times for more than 30 years, covering politics, transportation, travel, business and the outdoors. A native Californian, Martín was part of the Metro staff that won Pulitzer Prizes in 1993, 1995 and 1998. He is an avid outdoorsman, a proud father and die-hard Lakers fan.

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Are travel agents making a comeback?

Difficult site navigation and presentation on travel company sites and hotel and airline sites are causing a growing number of travelers to shift away from the Web and consider using alternative methods of booking travel.

Online travel sites flooded with overwhelming options, all claiming the best deals. Extra fees nestled into the fine print amid blaring advertisements. Pounding 16 digits into the telephone after you´ve booked the wrong flight before finally getting a human voice.

A few weeks ago, Darin Kaplan, a tech-savvy 27-year-old California restaurant manager, clicked his mouse hundreds of times, surfing the vast choices offered by online travel booking Web sites like Expedia.com and Orbitz.com to plan his 28th birthday cruise to Mexico before he gave up in frustration.

"It´s a cut-and-paste experience when you´re booking online. None of these sites are going to tell me what I can do with different options," said Kaplan, who uses the Internet for many purchases, including his basketball shorts and music tickets. "Travel agents know what they are talking about. It´s more comforting to hand my money to someone who has the knowledge and experience."

Some travelers like Kaplan are finding themselves defecting from travel booking sites like Travelocity.com or airline sites like Delta.com. They are going back the travel agent, an industry that many industry experts once thought to be passé with the advent of online booking.

Fewer travelers are enjoying using the Web to plan and buy trips, according to a study last week by Forrester Research, a market research company. About 46 percent of U.S. leisure travelers enjoyed using the Internet to book travel this year, down from 53 percent in 2007.

Difficult site navigation and presentation on travel company sites and hotel and airline sites are causing a growing number of travelers to shift away from the Web and consider using alternative methods of booking travel. "People are saying ´I don´t understand my options, and I would like to talk to someone who can do all the searching and tell me what´s available,´ " said Henry Hartevelt, the analyst who wrote the Forrester study. "Major travel agencies have absolutely failed in their responsibility to innovate and think of creative new ways to help their customers shop."

In the brick-and-mortar travel agent model, a trained agent meets with the traveler in person or establishes a relationship over the phone. For a fee, they discuss the travel options they have researched.

These travel agencies began losing their monopoly on the industry during the late 1990s, when airlines began to sell tickets online and travel giants like Expedia.com exploded onto the scene, quickly gobbling market share by introducing the quick, do-it- yourself model.

In 1995, there were 37,000 brick-and-mortar travel agencies, according to the American Society of Travel Agents. Now, only 18,000 exist after many merged or folded.

"What the Internet has done is given us a nation that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing," said Bill Maloney, CEO of the American Society of Travel Agents. "How do you know if a hotel is actually a good value or if it´s overpriced? You have these online generalists and these individual specialists."

Travel agent Nancy Cutter of Court Travel Ltd. in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a half-dozen other agencies across the country say they have experienced a surge in returning clients, who said travel Web sites were confusing and unhelpful.

In several instances, brick-and-mortar agents say they were able to offer deals at the same price as, and even undercut, the travel agent models, dispelling the belief that the cheapest rate is online.

Travel agents have deals with suppliers that can sometimes enable them to offer lower prices than on the Web. They also have time to cancel tickets for free, compared with some non-refundable tickets sold on the Web. Expedia.com said it recently waived the fee for travelers changing certain flights.

"Just because you can go out and buy Turbo Tax doesn´t mean it´s the best answer for everyone," Cutter said. "Some people will still go to an accountant. Booking travel can get complicated, and it´s just not as easy as it looks."

Travel agents don´t discount the value of online travel agencies, which can be useful for booking simple, short trips, but they say complex itineraries require more expertise from a professional. Many online travel companies agree that an agent may be valuable in planning a detailed honeymoon that includes a tour of vineyards in France or a family excursion to top snorkeling and kangaroo-watching destinations in Australia.

"If you´re the type of traveler who needs hand-holding up front, then sure, a travel agent would be great, but you can usually find that same information on the Web," said Brian Ek, a spokesman for Priceline.com, a travel company famous for letting bidders set their own price. He said the agents available by phone at his company can help facilitate a sale and customize cruises for travelers.

Online travel companies say they have made functionality improvements on their sites in recent years. For example, Expedia.com, the world´s largest online travel agency, offers a tool that can let customers compare seats on an airplane, with ratings on how comfortable a seat is and how much leg room is available. They also have hotel reviews and even Web tours of rooms to help travelers decide.

And, research shows that online travel model is poised to grow. Even in a recession, when companies and individuals are scaling back on travel, Expedia.com saw a 22 percent air transaction growth rate in the last quarter.

But Susan D. Tanzman of Martin´s Travel and Tours in California, who has worked as an agent for 35 years, points out that agents follow up with travelers before and after the trip. If the traveler needs help, the agency can offer assistance. They often work 24 hours a day.

JoAnne Kochneff, owner of midsize agency Travel by Gagnon in Michigan, said agents can give the personal attention a site cannot. Kochneff´s office provides a homey feel, with agents offering freshly baked cookies for clients who stop by to chat about their trips.

"They have personal experience traveling in the area, so they can give you a personal recommendation," said Frances Mosser, 67, of Kentucky, on her reason why she switched to the travel agent model this summer.

Mosser and her husband booked a trip to St. Melo in France with a travel agent. The agent helped them devise a way to reduce travel time by taking Ryan Air between countries.

"I don´t think we could have planned the trip without her," Mosser said.

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