If you haven’t used a travel advisor before and you don’t already suffer from FOMO, then this may be the one time in your life that you experience it. Leaving all esoteric thoughts on discovering the world aside, let’s talk instead about some tangibles. As a professional advisor, I feel there are 3 big things people miss out on most when they decide to book travel on their own: perks, professional advocacy, and savings.
We’ll look briefly at each one and discover why using a travel advisor is a minimal investment that packs a powerful return on your travel time.
PERKS!!
By far the most obvious one to get excited about. After spending hours planning a trip for my family, I finally took to Google searching for an agency. It was at that point when I realized that I had been missing out on years of perks and benefits simply because I had always booked directly rather than with an advisor.
Honestly, I couldn’t believe with all of my experience traveling I didn’t know this one little secret. When you consider that most advisors only charge around $25 to make your reservation, it’s a no brainer. If I didn’t know about this back then, then I’m betting neither do a lot of you reading this now. Here is a short list of valuable extras that our agency provides, or you can click here for more:
Upgrades, priority room designation, special amenities, hotel credits, advantageous pricing, personalized service, recognition.
ADVOCACY
This one is HUGE, and it’s the one nobody wants to think about. Travel advisors can’t guarantee your next trip won’t have any hiccups any more than a wealth manager can guarantee there will be no market volatility. But, like any good advisor we CAN be your advocate when there’s turbulence.
We’ve all heard call center horror stories. Online agency employees want to be helpful, but they are ill-equipped for major crisis management, and more critically lack the industry relationships needed to provide meaningful assistance. Having an advisor who knows about you and your situation, a real person with real connections, can be a lifeline during stressful times.
SAVINGS
Don’t miss out on opportunities to save both time and money simply because you don’t know who to call. An advisor frees up time for you to truly enjoy the planning process without having to do the heavy lifting of actually implementing the plan.
Additionally, through our affiliation with Brownell Travel, a Virtuoso member, we have access to rates and offers that are not published online.
Combined with the perks and amenities mentioned above and depending on your hotel, cruise, destination, and itinerary, this is often well over $500 of savings per day.
So now that you know the secrets, what are you waiting for!
