Many travelers who don’t regularly use travel agents are surprised that; (a) there are still any “brick-and-mortar” agents around, and (b), that anyone still uses them.
Admittedly, the internet has helped put a lot of agents out of business, but truthfully, many of those agents weren’t very good in the first place.
Most of the agents still left in the business fall into one of two categories — those who are just hanging on until retirement, often working for very low or no salary plus commission, and those who are very good at what they do.
More and more however, an interesting situation arises when those who don’t regularly use an agent decide to call one; many agents flat out just don’t want the business.
Here are just a few of the situations where a traveler may be politely turned down.
1. Travelers whose trip is just too small. When the request is just too limited and even service fees won’t make it worthwhile, travel agents back away. After all, why work for nothing?
On a semi-regular basis, I will get referral calls from people who tell me they don’t need a travel agent and have booked most of their trip, but they want say, a ferry in Greece, a small hotel in Cinque Terre or one or two tiny pieces of a trip they didn’t know how to do on their own.
Now, sometimes these travelers are worth cultivating, because they have no idea how travel agents make money. Most agents have more than one story about the person who has booked a luxury cruise with air, but just needs a hotel the night before the ship sails, or a fancy Hawaii resort booking but they just need an inter-island flight.
In some of these cases, a good agent would have actually saved them money and made commission on the trip. So, I will sometimes take a chance and help someone in this situation once, if they say they will come back.
Most agents will help out if it’s a regular client using a mileage award or a favor to someone’s college student child. But, for a one-time deal, even charging fees doesn’t make it worth the trouble.
The same goes for someone who needs, “Just Saturday night in an inn in the Wine Country,” when he has already been told by 50 places there is a two-night minimum.”
2. Travelers who just really want a reference source. Some people just love to book on their own because they are convinced it is cheaper, but they want free advice.
A gentleman called me earlier this because a friend had raved about a trip I had done to England. He had his airline tickets, but indicated he basically just needed hotels in London and Paris, and possibly a rental car. I agreed to help him because I know both cities well and it didn’t seem very time consuming.
I also explained to him that tours such as I did for his friend would require serious service fees, as they were time consuming and I wouldn’t be making anything on airline tickets.
He said he understood completely, and after I sent him descriptions of my favorite London hotels said he would get back to me with dates.
A few days later, he came back with the news that his family had decided to drop Paris; instead they wanted two weeks in England. He sent a list of cities and, since I had told him I knew England well, wanted a proposed itinerary, hotel ideas, day tours suggested and a list of must-sees in each location. For free.
I politely declined.
Another potential client called because she remembered I was a travel agent from when our children were in elementary school. She had been surfing online “for days” for fares for her family to Europe and told me the lowest price she had found.
I beat the price, even with a $40 per ticket fee, by $80 a ticket. She was thrilled, and asked to see the itinerary. And the next day called to say I was amazing, that she had finally found basically the same fare on the airline’s website, but had never seen it before.
She then asked if I would waive the fee or cut it in half. I said, “No, that it was all the money we made on the trip.”
So she sent me an email apologizing but “$160.00 is enough for a nice dinner in Europe so I booked direct.” (The only good part of this story is that she ran into problems trying to research ferries and hotels in Greece, called back, and it was very easy to politely tell her I couldn’t help her.)
3. Travelers who are just too picky. Or they change itineraries too often, to make booking their trips worth it, especially when it’s domestic coach travel.
An old acquaintance who had moved out of the area, and used to complain that I wouldn’t “do tickets for fees for friends” called out of the blue. He was feeling overwhelmed by his new company’s travel, and figured I would want the business.
Since I don’t take on much new business now anyway, and remember him being both very cost-conscious and as indecisive as Brett Favre, I said I didn’t think it would work, but said I would do one trip for him.
Suffice it to say that after several changes, (even with a last minute trip) two panicky calls about a nearly missed flight, and a complaint about his seating on Frontier, which at that time I had told him didn’t preassign seats, I was feeling sorry for whichever local agent he might find for next time.
Another client was a television production company. While it was fun to be a small part of putting a documentary together, their travel changed constantly. This meant calls and emails at all hours, including weekends, and constant ticket reissues.
Their newest assistant producer called and wanted me to work on their latest venture, which might have even more travel, but she also wanted me to discount fees, which were only $40 a ticket (not per change) in the first place. This time I said I couldn’t take it on.
4. Travelers who are just too cheap. No one wants to overpay for travel. We all want to save money. But some clients will complain about everything, even low fees, and constantly try to bargain. Most good agents will research more than one price option and are willing to check out matching an alternative fare someone’s read about in a mailer or the Sunday paper.
Every agent has stories about the people who seem to make bargain searching their life’s work, and call back regularly trying to get a trip’s price lower. In some cases, they even ask for a commission rebate because “this online site will do it.”
A friend of mine recently turned down requests to help with a hotel and ideas for cruise shore excursions, after a prospective client booked “this great deal” cruise with an online site that didn’t even have a customer service phone number.
5. Clients who only call when it’s a problem. While I understand that some people like to book most of a trip online, their dregs won’t keep an agent or agency in business.
A quick hotel is one thing. A “few nights during the World Cup” in South Africa, or a “nice central reasonably priced hotel in Munich during Octoberfest,” or last minute Thanksgiving tickets are another.
Come clients come knocking when their regular corporate travel agent can’t find them a hotel in a sold-out city; or in a recent case, had no idea about intra-Africa travel, which means high-hassle low-reward work.
In these cases, most agents will decide they have enough hassles with their regular clients. Curiously enough, a lot of travelers who make up this latter group can be amongst the most “entitled,” calling and emailing repeatedly because they want their problem solved now. (An email earlier this year at 9:30 p.m. at night from a friend-of-a-friend said, “I have to get these tickets booked so you need to call me now at home and I don’t have home your number.” And no, I didn’t call.)
Along with most agents, I generally like my clients. Most people are basically decent, and don’t think try to take advantage, although agents will joke about making a rule against booking travel for “friends and family,” who actually can be the most demanding clients of all.
But as some of the above stories indicate, some people just don’t care as long as they get what they want at a better price. And while most good travel agents are still doing very well in this economy, it’s not a profession that draws people who just care about the money. But sometimes we have to draw the line.
Janice Hough is a California-based travel agent a travel blogger and a part-time comedy writer. A frequent flier herself, she’s been doing battle with airlines, hotels, and other travel companies for over three decades. Besides writing for Travelers United, Janice has a humor blog at Leftcoastsportsbabe.com (Warning, the political and sports humor therein does not represent the views of anyone but herself.)
