WHAT A TRAVEL AGENCY DOES FOR YOU AND HOW WE ARE PAID

Hi! I’m Julie Lanham, President of Vacations To Remember. Most of our company content is written in a fairly professional voice, but I am going to keep this blog pretty casual if you don’t mind. I tend to get VERY wordy in my emails so I figured I would take my long-windedness over here for anyone who just loves to read or truly wants to understand the value of hiring us. Let’s go.

There is a great deal of confusion over our purpose as travel professionals. If you are one of the confused (or curious), I want to explain it in layman’s terms where it makes sense. Not just a bunch of words that will further confuse you. The travel industry is one of the largest in the world and yet there is such a mystique around what travel advisors do. So here it is. We do for your vacation what your mechanic does for your car. What your accountant does for your taxes. What your hairstylist does for your hair. We do the stuff you don’t want to do, don’t know how to do or don’t have time to do.

Have you ever ordered groceries to be delivered? Do you go somewhere to get your nails done? Are you happy paying someone to cut your grass or clean your house? If so, you need us. You’re busy! You don’t have time to scour the internet looking for “deals”. And even if you did, do you enjoy that?? If the answer to that is “Yes! I love scrolling down a rabbit hole for months searching for the perfect place to relax for a week!”, then maybe think about this… what if what you found isn’t as perfect as you think? What if there is something better that you didn’t see because that website doesn’t offer it? Or worse… what if something goes wrong and you need help? We’ve seen it all. We got you. We like to compare what we do for your vacation to a fine dining experience. Can you plan your own anniversary or birthday dinner? Sure, but do you want to think about the meal, find the recipe, shop for the groceries, prepare and serve it all and then clean up after? Most people want someone else to serve them on special occasions and your vacation is absolutey a special occasion!

Now, here is the part that probably confuses people the most, and I’ll be completely transparent. How do we get paid? Well, the travel fairies certainly don’t send us a check each month, that is for sure! Prior to 1995, airlines paid travel agencies 10% commission to issue airline tickets for them. When they figured out the whole website, paperless ticket thing, they cut that out. There is zero commission earned on airline tickets and that has been the case for over 25 years. Who knew?!? We did. So what about hotels and cruise lines? Yes, some do still pay travel agencies a small commission as a thank you for servicing our mutual clients, AFTER they travel. This is strictly between the hotel (or cruise line) and the travel agency and is not paid if the trip doesn’t happen. Crazy, right? So every time someone contacts a travel agency for information on a trip, that travel agent is working for free. If the only way they are paid is by the hotel/cruise after travel (sometimes a year later), it would be almost impossible to survive long term. And it is certainly not eough to cover the salaries and overhead of a company. That’s just a fact. But how does that affect you? Well, for starters, any travel agent that works for free can only offer you vacation options that will pay them a commission later. So who are they working for? And what if the PERFECT place for you doesn’t pay as much commission (or any)? Yeah, you’ll never see that option. As put plainly by Daniel Hövermann, “If you are not paying for a service, then you are the product”.

So this is what we do. We are a professional service (I promise- we love our jobs but none of my travel advisors do this as a hobby) and we do charge for it. Gasp! I know. It’s hard to talk about money and to be truly honest, we only started charging for our service after a pesky little pandemic in 2020 that halted travel for six months. What a lesson that was! It taught us that we offer amazing value to our clients. Peace of mind being top of the list! You know that famous line, “If I do a job in 30 minutes it’s because I spent 10 years learning how to do that in 30 minutes. You owe me for the years not the minutes.”? That could not be a more perfect representation of why we do charge a research & design fee. Personally, I have been a travel advisor for over 35 years. Crazy, right? But it’s true. I started in 1985 when I was in high school and then opened my own travel agency in 1996. I know stuff. A lot of stuff. And I know people. A lot of people. Oh, but only in travel. I know nothing about anything else so I happily pay someone to do my taxes and fix my car and pretty much everything else in life. (*wink*) Isn’t that what we do? Pay the experts to do the stuff we don’t know how to do or don’t have time to do? It’s what makes the world go round.

So if you are still here and want to know more about exactly what we do when you hire us, here it is! It comes down to four important things. We consult, research, design & manage.

Consulting starts with questions. From you but also from us. We get to know what you want from your vacation and you will know what we will do to make it the best it can be. Things like, do you like a boutique hotel or a high rise? Do you like to explore a city while traveling or just relax? We make suggestions like not leaving for your honeymoon the day after your wedding or bringing a friend for your teenager on a trip to London so they are not bored to death. We ask questions that you might not even know the answers to but together, we figure it out. We like to try and think for our clients whenever possible. You don’t know what you don’t know, right?

Researching is the part that pays for itself tenfold! When a client tells us where they want to fly and when, we research everything. Best flights based on departure city, travel dates (if we see your date is higher than it should be, we advise if you shift you can save a lot of money), and airlines. While we might find a very good airfare on a flight that gets you to your destination at 6pm where you miss a whole day, we research a better option that might not be much more expensive and well worth a few dollars extra if it gets you where you are going 8 hours earlier with minimal connections. We know the resorts that have hot tubs in the rooms, which hotels are within walking distance of where you want to be and what time of year there is more seaweed in a certain place, and how to avoid that. Trust me, with our knowledge and experince, we can do the research in an hour that would take most people weeks to do!

Design? Some people like to participate in this and that is great! We welcome any and all feedback and input from our clients. Let’s discuss it together and make it perfect. Others have no clue and want us to just pick out the good stuff and send them on their way. Do you know the must see places in every destination? Or ones that would appeal to you? We do. We will tell you all about them.

Manage! Now, this is the dirty work that no one wants to do! Oddly, We like it. We are a cross-the-T kind of service. We make the bookings (flights, hotels, transportation, trains, tours, etc), process the payments, manage flight schedule changes (whew there are a lot!), monitor hotel closures/construction/issues (we can’t always know everything but we try!) and stay totally up to date on all things travel protocols. We send your travel documents and a very long, detailed pre-departure email about two weeks before you go. Our clients leave for vacation fully prepared to travel. Travel managment is a huge part of vacation planning and most people don’t fully get how important it is. We do!

So yes, times have changed and we are not your grandma’s travel agency. We are a modern-day boutique, travel management company, and proud of the high level service we provide. Do you still have questions? If so, here are some FAQs about our fee. Or you can email me personally at JulieLanham@VacationsToRemember.com and grill me. I’d love to continue the conversation when you’re ready!