Hawaii Vacation Specialist-Chris

What are the advantages of using a travel agent?

There are many advantages to using a travel agent versus booking your own travel online especially with a hawaii vacation.  Hawaii is a complex destination especially if you are doing a multi island trip and often times you can’t book many islands online yourself making it impossible to do your own booking.  If doing a multi island hawaiian vacation call an agent frist.  Often times we get those I booked my roundtrip to honolulu but want to do other islands.  A lot of people don’t realize you can fly back to your state of origin without coming back to honolulu so often times you just bought yourself an extra interisland flight by doing it that way.  I have also gotten those we want to stay at this hotel for a convention or a wedding we are attending, but we already booked our flight, just need hotel.  Here is where an agent will also come in handy to call first.  Oops..i booked my ticket to the wrong island.  Yes I have had calls like that and guess what?  They then had to book an interisland roundtrip flight to get to the right island.  Below are just a few more added benefits of using an agent.  Hawaii Vacation

• Personal service.  Booking with a travel agent offers you personal service from beginning to end.  It is often helpful when you have an agent that knows the destination you are traveling to so that they can plan the best trip for your needs and wants and also can usually give you extra added things like places to go and what you definately should see and also make it your vacation run smooth.
• Last minute bookings.  If you have a spur of the moment trip an agent is deinately the way to go.  A lot of times when trying to do it online it may show you this property is not available for your dates and such.  With an agent we will check availability for you at the last minute and try to get you accomodations by checking everyone’s inventory and ultimately calling properties to try to find you availability and confirm it.  Often times we can find some blocked space at the hotels that may not be available eslewhere depending on how last minute it is.
• Problems on your trip?  When booking online and you have a problem during your trip and you booked online, who do you call that will help you?  Most often the answer is no one.  You will probably have to fix it yourself and then contact them upon your return home to see what they can do to fix it.  If you book with an agent you can contact the agent who helped you and have them fix everything for you.  Even if your agent is not available someone else will be available to help you at the company to get things fixed for you.  Basically when using an agent and having a problem during travel you get a live body helping you right away, not after you return and have spent your trip fixing your vacation.
• Payment options.  When booking online you have to have your entire amount ready to give them at time of booking.  When using an agent most times we can get you on a payment plan for your trip.  We realize that vacations are not always cheap and may be difficult to pay for all at once.  Most times you can put a low deposit on your trip, make payments at any time up until final payment is due or just pay the balance off at the time of final payment.  Airfare is not guaranteed using this plan, but when possible your agent will notify you of air increases to allow you to lock in your air price by paying that amount provided the air carrier gives us time to notify you.  Also a lot of people need to put their trip on more than one card as just one card may not have enough credit for the entire trip or maybe everyone on the trip is paying separately.  That is completely understandable and an agent can easily do that for you.  You can use one card or you can use multiple cards if you want to.
• Price.  This is usually the bottom line when people are booking their vacations.  We always get the line, "Well I found it on expedia for this price."  If you let your agent know what pricing you are finding online most times we can match it or beat it.  If we can’t we usually come in pretty close, but think about for that $20.00 or so more that we are coming in at, all the extra added benefits and service you are getting.  Most often the money you save online doesn’t make up for the lack of service you get.  We always try to get the best price that we can for you and often times succeed.  Also sometimes there are hidden things in booking online and that is why the price comes out cheaper.   Sometimes you choose a hotel and when you get there, it looks nothing like what it looked like on their website, then when you are unhappy with that who do you call?

The bottom line is to use an agent for booking your hawaiian vacation.  You will be much happier you did and what harm can it do?   You won’t be paying any extra to get all the added service so really you get a better deal.  Hawaii Vacation