@Keith: the difference between a “competent travel professional” in a local office and the big online sites is that they’re smaller and you can deal directly with a single agent, over and over if necessary. You can walk in, sit down, and stay planted in the seat till they figure out a solution. With Travelocity/Orbitz/etc., you call in, you give them an account or incident number, you wait while yet another CSA reads the history of the case in the form of whatever notes the last CSA entered… frankly, if I were an agent who got one of those complicated cases and I knew, deep down, that this was going to take forever to fix… I’d want to give them the company line too and assure them it was being taken care of, and let the next agent who took a call from that customer deal with it.

What exactly would a “competent travel professional” have done for these people. You mentioned in your previous posting about apple vacations that a brick and morter travel agent has no responsiblity when the third party it booked through goes belly up. What is different in this situation? Seems to me that these honeymooners would have still been stuck having to purchase new airline tickets weather they purchased through travelocity or a brick and morter place. The only difference appears that by writing to you, the large online places like travelocity are more likely to cave and give refunds.

Travel consultants and travel agents (yes, there’s a difference!) spent many, many hours re-booking clients’ flights to Hawaii in the wake of the ATA bankruptcy – same with Aloha Airlines, which happened around the same time, if I recall right.

One after another, actually. And boy, did that cause lots of issues back then.

True story: one of my ex-fellow travel agents got a customer whose Aloha Airlines flights were cancelled because of their bankruptcy. One of our feasible options that time was to rebook them into…ATA Airlines.

The agent rebooked the customer into ATA at no cost to both of us, the customer greatly thanked that agent, and he was highly praised among his peers. A few days later, that agent got rather distraught when he was told that ATA Airlines went bankrupt too.

Very few, if any, travel agents/agencies are willing to shoulder the costs of rebooking their customers’ flights on another airline whenever this exact scenario happens. No doubt some people believe the travel agent or so should’ve, while obviously the travel agent disagrees and can only do so much while keeping costs to the barest minimum.

Each travel agency will decide on their own which course of action to take. Same with the customer.

Whether the agent’s liable or not, well…that’s up to the judge.

Because travelocity is arguably the agent for ATA and as such is liable for ATAs failure to perform.

Regina, as a faithful reader of Chris’s blog, I understand your opinion, but I will politely disagree with you: our word does mean something. In fact, you have my word that if you’d like a promo code for use on a future hotel stay or vacation package booked through us, drop me a line. Cheers.

Had myself or many of my colleagues booked this bride’s honeymoon flights, it was our responsibility to ensure her flights were protected on another carrier in some fashion – and that’s exactly what happened industry-wide. Travel consultants and travel agents (yes, there’s a difference!) spent many, many hours re-booking clients’ flights to Hawaii in the wake of the ATA bankruptcy – same with Aloha Airlines, which happened around the same time, if I recall right. It was a crazy and chaotic time, and it sounds like the Travelocity agent said whatever Kim wanted to hear to get her off the line and out of their hair.

I’m glad she was able to get restitution. Chris is right, though – booking “special event” travel like a honeymoon without the aid of a professional travel consultant isn’t a good idea. It’s a special time in life, and obviously you’d want nothing to go wrong, or as little to go wrong as possible. That’s the value of a professional consultant.

Justin