A helping travel hand

By Jennifer Cox, October 17th, 2012

There are a lot of logistics involved in organizing a trip, from booking transportation and hotels to maintaining a budget. This is especially true if the vacation revolves around a special event. While there are a number of online resources that attempt to streamline this process, a lot of travellers prefer to interact with a person and opt instead to go to a travel agency.
There are loads of advantages to working with an agency — not only do they have access to all of the destinations, hotels, activities, and airlines, but they're on top of trends and can keep you up-to-date on local events, potential problems (such as political unrest in a certain area), scheduling (including optimal times to travel), weather, and more. Given their expertise, they can also take advantage of great pricing and particular deals on accommodations and flights.
Shannon Cater of Pointe-Claire recently eloped with her now-husband to Cuba, and was working within an extremely tight timeframe as well as a budget. She found the perfect planning partner when she contacted travel agency agent Cindy Porco, who was in the midst of planning her own destination wedding.
“We were turned away from different travel agents at first, who said there was no way they could help me in such a short period of time,” she explained. “I'm not one to go online and find a deal, especially because I was planning a wedding.”
Not only did Porco take care of booking the airline as well as the resort, Melias Las Dunas, but she worked out all the details for the wedding itself, being the liaison and obtaining all the necessary details for setting the wedding date, working out the logistics of the ceremony, and more. “Given our timeframe I never would have been able to do it without an agency, especially because I was inexperienced and had obviously never planned a destination wedding before.”
Another major perk of working with an agency is that there's usually no cost involved — travel agents make their cuts by booking through certain hotels and airlines, and therefore there's no fee to the end-user. The same can't necessarily be said of online booking. A lot of times, additional charges are worked into the final price of a flight or accommodations. It's important to pay attention to the fine print after booking online before confirming a reservation.
Here are some more reasons why it's a smart idea to work with a travel agent when planning your next getaway:
Choice: It could literally take days to comb through all the options out there in terms of destination, hotels, transportation, and more. Travel agents can whittle that down to the best options for your vacation-type and budget.
Travel documentation: Agents will be able to ensure you have all the necessary documents needed for a seamless trip.
Kid-friendly: If you're traveling with children, travel agents can recommend the best hotspots that cater to kids and families.
Local laws: Don't worry about doing tons of research prior to your departure — a travel agent will be able to tell you everything you need to know about the local laws of the city that you're visiting.
A lifeline: If you encounter any problems on your vacation, a travel agent can be your main contact and can help you through any unforeseen situations.