Many travel agents have seen their ranks decimated and their incomes plummet. So today, the gospel is, if you don’t book with a travel agent, then you are stupid and if anything bad happens on your trip, its because you were too stupid or cheap to book with us, because we could have protected you.

The reality is like any other service provider there are times when their fees are justified and times when the fees are not. For example, I own my own business. As such I use an accountant for my taxes. My friend is a regular employee in his firm. TurboTax works fine for him.

Unforunately, because of many stories questioning the future viability of the travel agent position, travel agents have responded with the silly, dubious, positions which approach the absurd. My favorite was an article posted on Tripso.com, a travel agent hangout, the blatently stated that the advice of a travel agent is as important as medical advice. Clearly the author has gone off the reservation for a while.

The last two “local” travel agencies I went to were staffed by (a) A person (manager) who couldn’t be bothered to find me a non smoking hotel room in London, and (b) A woman who is a “professional” travel agent that had never heard of the “London Pass” and took a lot longer to figure out/find it than a non travel agent on the web. I did write to the head office of the “manager’s” travel agency because she was highly unprofessional. A good case of someone who should have retired many years and wrinkles ago.

These are the recent occurances, but I can recount numerous episodes over the course of my life where going to a “professional” travel agent has either cost me time or money (usually money).

Yet every time anything at all comes up, there are these voices that pop up talking about using a professional travel agent.

Maybe I should tell you about the one who couldn’t understand simple telephone company announcements and didn’t know how to leave voicemal – that one cost me a few hundred dollars, and a few hours. Or the one who “couldn’t be expected to know about sales” when there were few airlines in the country and they took out full page ads….not to mention she had a computer reservation system.

I’ll give a little bit of advice to those who want people to use professional travel agencies a little more: Make sure there are a lot fewer people like me who have countless stories of travel agent incompetence. I have not a single story of a travel agent saving the day – not a one!

This is one industry where there is a great need to cull the bad ones from the herd.

I’m sure there are competent professional travel agents out there somewhere. The only problem is, they are just about as rare as a considerate smoker.

Why don’t people work with their LOCAL travel consultants

Maybe because they need to find them first?

In our travel agency (which sadly I can’t reveal as I’m not really authorized to talk on behalf of them) itself, we’re able to refund hotel, car and certain reservation-type (e.g. tours) cancellations. But that’s because the vendors we work with agree not to bill us for cancelling before travel.

The tough part is the airfare because it depends on each carrier’s policies. Good thing most agreed to waive their ticket-reissue fees for changing dates and/or routes, though some still charge a fare difference.

It’s nice if the travel agency can absorb any and all costs for cancelling the trip, on the (risky?) premise that customers will rebook with them if/when this thing’s settled down. But…that’s for each one to decide on their own depending how costly it is doing so, and they’ll deal with the results anyway.