Travel agent versus booking yourself - honeymoon!

nearzero

How many people have used a travel agent versus booking their own honeymoon? did they find it any better or did it take any pressure/stress off them doing it via travel agent?

We are hoping to go to Disneyland, Las Vegas & San Fran so was thinking of getting some else to sort out the logistics but not sure yet - any recommendations of travel agents??

Thanks!

kkcatlou

We're going through the same at the moment. Neither of us have ever used a travel agent before and usually go on pretty big holidays in Africa or South America and have never found the need. For honeymoon, however, we felt that it would probably be best to use one. a) to save time, as we have enough else to do. b) to ensure that every eventuality is looked after and we don't have to be looking after logistics while there.

That said, we are going to a pretty exotic location, so the chances of things going wrong if we do it ourselves is higher. if it was somewhere more mainstream like the states, I would say we'd be happy to do it ourselves. I know quite a few people who've booked the states themselves for honeymoon and had no issues (except for one leaving her driver's licence at home!!). Do you normally book your own holidays? If so, then you should be grand!

As for agents, we went to Trail Finders first, found them good, but very overpriced. Then went into Abbey Travel, rang them and emailed them, and got zero reply! Same with Club Travel on Liffey Street. So, we're 99% decided we are going with Travel Counselors. We've (well, he has, I've had no input) had all the chats by phone or email. So far, they seem excellent.

nearzero

God if I'm honest, the last time I was on a plane was about 8 years ago & that was to Scotland!

Only 'big' holiday I've every organised by OH's 30th to New York & that was easy-peasy! I guess its just cause we were doing a few different cities but I dont see too much hassle in doing it ourselves either -was wondering if travel agents get some sort of inside hand in knowing the best way to get the best out of your honeymoon.. upgrades etc! And then insurances wise, if stuff does go wrong - can you get help from your travel agent??

Crimson King

Booked a trip to Thailand for my honeymoon 3 years ago and booked everything myself. Hotels, trips to the islands, cooking classes, snorkellng and Scuba diving classes etc. loved it, and I would do it again. Meant I had full control and knew what to expect at each occasion.

However in hindsight the hours and hours I spent pouring over a laptop for researching the prices could ave meant more time for wedding stuff and maybe the extra few hundred euro might have been worth it. I was under pressure as the big day got closer.

So honestly, I enjoyed the experience of doing it all myself but at least with a TA there is comeback and assurances. Can see merits in both approaches.

ilovespudss

Booked ours a couple of months ago, to Thailand.

I had never used a travel agent before but decided it was the best bet as I couldn't be bothered with the logistics of a three centre holiday and worrying about internal fights etc.

Trailfinders, Travelmood and travel councillors were all excellent to deal with.

Travel councillors offer a great service, our agent even called around to our house one Friday night, unfortunately she just couldn't compete with either of the other two on price.

Trailfinders and Travelmood were both similar in price, but make sure you press them for the best deal... I think I knocked €800 odd euro offthe price in the space of 2 days haggling.

Ended up going with Travelmood in the end and I'm happy with the price. I tried in vain to beat what they were offering me, by booking myself, but the best I could do was pretty much match what they were offering, minus €100 or so, so it was a no brainer to let them do all the leg work

Birdie086

We are looking at honeymoon options at the moment. We got a great deal in Creation Travel limerick but haven't booked yet as still deciding.

Our budget was laughed at in trailfinders!!( well ok not laughed at outright but agent said there was no way we would get stateside with a cruise without spending twice what we wanted - which we have found we is actually doable)


American holidays seem to have great mutli-centre/cruise holiday packages.

xalot

I always book everything myself when going on holidays, I really enjoy all the research etc but when it came to my honeymoon I let Trailfinders take care of it, had enough to be doing with the wedding preparations! We had a multi centre holiday and I didn't want the hassle of organising transfers and the like

I did book one of the hotels myself though as I wanted a nice boutique holiday in one of the places.

berrecka

Birdie086 wrote: »

We are looking at honeymoon options at the moment. We got a great deal in Creation Travel limerick but haven't booked yet as still deciding.

Our budget was laughed at in trailfinders!!( well ok not laughed at outright but agent said there was no way we would get stateside with a cruise without spending twice what we wanted - which we have found we is actually doable)


American holidays seem to have great mutli-centre/cruise holiday packages.

I've just had the exact same experience with Trailfinders. Our budget definitely isn't miniscule (granted, its not humongous either), and even though we want to cross the equator over the Christmas period, which we know is peak season, I know it can be done on our budget. Trailfinders totally put me off even thinking about it though. Ill get back to researching it soon.

jonnyfingers

Can't suggest Irish travel agents as we're living in London at the mo, but we and have used a small independent travel agent for our honeymoon to Singapore and Bali, Jasmine Holidays. I usually organise all our holidays but for the honeymoon I priced up a sample itinerary with flights, hotels and transfers myself and then asked various travel agents to price up the same itinerary. Most came back more expensive but one came back around £500 cheaper, mainly due to their ability to get some a reduction on flight costs with Singapore Airlines and a free night at one of our 5* hotels.

So overall if you're good at organising your own travel you should look to book everything yourself. But price it up first and see what price travel agents would give for the same holiday, some may surprise you.

If you're not good at organising yourself then just go with a travel agent.

Gatica

The quotation we got from a travel agent on 24 days in SE Asia (flights/transfers, accommodation and tours) was just over 70% of what it actually cost us to do the trip ourselves over 28 days (all of it, including spending money).
It was worth it for us doing it ourselves as we research every part of the trip and went to see places that our friends who'd been there recommended.
I don't know if travel agents do itineraries based on list of places you tell them, but then if you're already doing all that prep work yourself, there's not a comparatively huge amount of additional work on top of that to actually do the booking.
A number of places that they scheduled for the trip, according to friends, were not worth visiting. So it was nice to tailor our honeymoon to exactly what we wanted to do. The whole thing did involve quite a lot of work though, so I can see how they earn their money.

heroics

We booked ours through Brendan in tropicalsky and found him excellent. Very knowledgeable on the places we wanted to go to, responded to queries very quickly etc. Also seemed to be a good deal as I also compared the prices I could get for the same holiday and was only very little in the difference. Well worth it for not having the hassle.

I had the same kind of experience as kkcatlou with abbey travel. Took them a week to get back to me after phoning them and even then was only half of what we had asked for in the quote.

paulbok

xalot wrote: »

I always book everything myself when going on holidays, I really enjoy all the research etc but when it came to my honeymoon I let Trailfinders take care of it, had enough to be doing with the wedding preparations! We had a multi centre holiday and I didn't want the hassle of organising transfers and the like

I did book one of the hotels myself though as I wanted a nice boutique holiday in one of the places.

Same story for us. We (meaning myself ) usually book all our holidays ourselves but for the honeymoon we went with Trailfinders. I had looked at booking it myself and it may have worked out about €300 cheaper, but that hadn't included 3 internal flights so we went with their package. More security in the case of flight delays, cancellations as well. As a lot of others posted, there is enough to do before the wedding and it's worth having no stress during the honeymoon.
We did get them to book a particular hotel we wanted that they didn't normally deal with so you can get it tailored a bit.

jonnyfingers

Gatica wrote: »

The quotation we got from a travel agent on 24 days in SE Asia (flights/transfers, accommodation and tours) was just over 70% of what it actually cost us to do the trip ourselves over 28 days (all of it, including spending money).
It was worth it for us doing it ourselves as we research every part of the trip and went to see places that our friends who'd been there recommended.
I don't know if travel agents do itineraries based on list of places you tell them, but then if you're already doing all that prep work yourself, there's not a comparatively huge amount of additional work on top of that to actually do the booking.
A number of places that they scheduled for the trip, according to friends, were not worth visiting. So it was nice to tailor our honeymoon to exactly what we wanted to do. The whole thing did involve quite a lot of work though, so I can see how they earn their money.

I normally agree with this but as I said in my post I was pleasantly surprised by one travel agent. However I didn't give them my exact itinerary, basically I gave them my flight dates and times which did in fact narrow them down to the same flights as I had chosen. Then I was pleasantly surprised to see their accommodation choices come back very similar to mine. As it happens they managed to get the exact same flights as me for £300 cheaper. And one of the hotels I was going to book they had a deal to get one night free saving another £200.

So a situation like that is when a travel agent shows their worth. Sometimes they have deals with certain airlines or hotels for cheaper fares, or can throw in a few freebies. However every other travel agent I tried was much more expensive so I think you need to shop around.

Ginny

I did ours myself first stop Mexico 12 nights and 6 nights in ny. Some agents would only do it the other way round, pointless for us, others couldn't do the 12/6 night combo. Others couldn't give us the hotels we wanted only main Cancun ones (which we wanted to avoid). All of them were quoting at least 7k+ more than we could get it for.

skippy15

Personally I booked through travel counsellors, just didn't want hassle of anything going wrong. Price wise they done me a better package than doin it myself and put exactly the requirements I wanted of few days in Barcelona and a med cruise. Was great to ask for hints and tips etc: too.
Think at least worth talking to see what can offer then make a decision, but im delighted I did use them

nosietoes

I would probably ask travel agents for a quotation anyway given that where you want to go are such popular destinations...

Having said that, it should be super easy to book the trip yourself especially as Vegas is only a 4 hour drive from Disneyland so you won't even need to book many flights... or any if you like driving - San Fran is just over 8 hours drive so it might be worth taking a flight especially as its a rather boring drive across the dessert.

Booking hotels is ridiculously easy as well - open a travel book and check out their website or open trip advisor and click on whichever suits your budget and that's it.

Check out skyskanner.ie for good value on flights. Though gohop.ie can have some amazing deals as well.

spurious

skippy15 wrote: »

Personally I booked through travel counsellors, just didn't want hassle of anything going wrong. Price wise they done me a better package than doin it myself and put exactly the requirements I wanted of few days in Barcelona and a med cruise. Was great to ask for hints and tips etc: too.
Think at least worth talking to see what can offer then make a decision, but im delighted I did use them

Not for a honeymoon, but I used travel counsellors to book a slightly complicated trip and like your experience, they did it cheaper than I was able to manage myself.

Andiewoo

Would one get a sunnymoon in January for 3000€ per couple???

ilovespudss

Andiewoo wrote: »

Would one get a sunnymoon in January for 3000€ per couple???

We're doing 14 nights in Thailand for around the €5k mark for both of us. It's a multi centre trip with 7 nights at the beach in Khao Lak, 4 nights up north in Chiang Mai and 3 nights in Bangkok.

We booked through Travelmood, as I couldn't beat their quote myself.

Andiewoo

ilovespudss wrote: »

We're doing 14 nights in Thailand for around the €5k mark for both of us. It's a multi centre trip with 7 nights at the beach in Khao Lak, 4 nights up north in Chiang Mai and 3 nights in Bangkok.
Are you not worried about Thailand? With the cerfew etc.... We wanted to go there but decided not to for that reason

ilovespudss

Andiewoo wrote: »

ilovespudss wrote: »

We're doing 14 nights in Thailand for around the €5k mark for both of us. It's a multi centre trip with 7 nights at the beach in Khao Lak, 4 nights up north in Chiang Mai and 3 nights in Bangkok.
Are you not worried about Thailand? With the cerfew etc.... We wanted to go there but decided not to for that reason

Ah no, sure we're not there until January, it'll be grand. I'm sure it'll be sorted by then.

Worst comes to worst we'll steer clear of Bangkok but I doubt it'll come to that. The beach and island areas look amazing and Chiang Mai seems very interesting.

Andiewoo

ilovespudss wrote: »

Andiewoo wrote: »

I might rethink again! I really want to go! They all look amazing! I'd be happy with koi samui for 14 days looking at the sky sipping cocktails. And the odd trip to an island!

Birdie086

Andiewoo wrote: »

Would one get a sunnymoon in January for 3000€ per couple???

we are probably going to new york for a few days and then a nine night cruise, western med, on norwegian gem. it looks like it will be about 2500 for both of us.

flikflak

We went to central America for ours and booked it all ourselves. As someone above said when you have done all the research it only takes a few clicks to actually book it.

Our return flight was cancelled which would have meant we missed our connecting flight but AA sorted us all out by re routing us. They sorted hotel and other flights for us. Was a breeze.

I dont see what could go wrong if you have thoroughly researched a place and are happy with it. Sure what can a travel agent do when you are 1000`s of miles across the world and something goes wrong. A decent travel insurance policy should get you out of trouble should there be any.

Its just how I prefer to book be it for a weekend away, a round the world or a honeymoon.