Live travel agent versus on line web booking machines

I have been invited to a conference in Las Vegas so I decided to do a little shopping around for an air and hotel package. Come on everyone checks around for the best travel deal! This time I am going to conduct a test- man, actually a female travel agent versus machines or the on-line travel agencies.

To be fair to all the contestants as a price shopper you should always compare apples to apples. So I will be looking at the same airline, travel dates, arrival and departure times, ground services, hotel accommodations and number of travelers. The particulars for this trip are day time roundtrip nonstop flights for 2 people, not senior citizens, from Columbus OH to Las Vegas NV, travel dates Dec 3rd 2007 to Dec 7th, 2007, roundtrip airport to hotel transportation, 4 nights at the Excalibur Hotel and Casino along with all taxes and fees.

My first visit was to a local on-line web based travel agency recently featured in the Herald Dispatch. Their attractive user friendly web site allowed me to price my trip and initially offered a $360.08 deal. However closer inspection revealed that the flights changed in Milwaukee WI in both directions. Changing to my non stop preference the package price increased to $462.28.

Next step was to price the identical vacation package on travelocity.com. The results were almost the same as my 1st search with less than a $5.00 difference per person. Again the connecting flights option was the initial displayed lowest price. Had I selected this option on price alone and not looked closely at the flight schedule I would have purchased a non refundable package that did not really meet my travel needs. When prompted for the nonstop flights the Travelocity package increased to $460.00 a person.

Step 3 was to have my favorite travel agent shop for me. She accessed an “agent” only booking engine and offered me what I really wanted. A 9:00am departure from Columbus with an 11:30am return from Vegas, both nonstop flights. The airline ticket, roundtrip airport to hotel transfers, lodging and all taxes came to $ 352.30 per person.

“Check one more thing for me. What’s the cost of just the airline ticket alone” I asked. She replied that it was $338.30. So for only $14.00 more per person I could get 4 nights lodging and transfers. Guess what my response to the travel gal was? Book it!

Please note that these prices are subject to change and about one hundred thousand other variables may apply that could impact your trip cost so to guarantee this package I had to reserve it immediately and place a deposit on it. There was also plenty of fine print about payment schedule, change or cancel fees and so forth and my agent took the time to explain the package terms and conditions and to make sure that I understood them. In this regards to this items the on-line sites only presented me with the option to click in a box that I understood the terms and conditions of the transaction.

My scorecard reads 1 sale for the “live” travel agent and on-line sites zero. Teaching point here is to compare like products, analyze the data and carefully read the offers before purchasing.