subject: Consult A Professional Travel Agent Today! [print this page] Last year, my spouse and I had the opportunity to take the vacation of a lifetime to Ireland. While we had a marvelous experience, I can definitely look back and see where I might have improved vital areas of the trip. Fortunately, the areas in which I went wrong can be instructive to you. Allow me to share some of my mistakes so you don't repeat them.
First off, I can say that it would have been more convenient to have consulted a professional travel agent in arranging all of our bookings. We individually booked with each hotel, contacted a separate company for the rental car, and our flight was through a travel site online, so not only did we have many emails and much paperwork to keep track of, if we had had a dispute at any point during the trip, we would have dealt with a wide variety of customer service policies and could potentially have had to contact our credit card company as well.
What a hassle! If we had consulted a luxury travel advisor as we had initially planned to do, then we would have had a single negotiator on our side at all times. After all, travel agents are experienced in knowing all types of policies for airlines, hotels, rental agencies, and more. Plus, they know how to navigate you toward companies that maintain excellent customer service records so you are less likely to encounter such problems in the first place.
In hotels across the globe, you can get a killer rate if you pay far in advance and agree that any money you put down is non-refundable. Often, this is a great way to get a discount if your trip is set in stone. But beware! Be sure to read hotel reviews before booking in this fashion.
My spouse and I only had one poor experience with our accommodations, and it was for a bed and breakfast that sounded charming, but after we had already placed a large non-refundable deposit, we found out it received rotten reviews from travelers like us. As it turned out, the window in our room was broken and the heater did not work. Pretty miserable for a November night in Galway!
Make sure you have a way to read restaurant reviews on the go, too. Fortunately, many travel sites have applications or mobile sites you can access from your smart phone, so be sure those will be available to you on your trip. If you don't have an international mobile plan, then bring along your laptop and make some decisions before you leave your hotel.
You can have the perfect vacation if you avoid some of our mistakes. Be sure to consult a professional travel agent before you get started!
by: Art Gib
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