Why Travel Advisors are Essential

In the new time and age, technology has taken over. From travel to even daily activities, people have replaced many things in their daily life that were usually done by hand or in person with an object they can hold in their hand and with the touch of a button see what they need to do, talk to family and friends, and ask a voice on the inside of their phone how to spell something. Technology may seem all fine and dandy until it claims the jobs of people around the globe. Travel advisors, for example.

In many opinions, travel advisors are extinct due to up and coming technology. Online booking sites like Travelocity and Expedia can directly book your room or trip with suppliers. These sites may seem like the cheaper, easier option for your next family vacation but they aren’t. What happens if someone in your family falls ill and needs you to stay home and take care of them, will Travelocity and Expedia be there to cancel your trip and help you get a refund? Most likely, no. But a travel advisor will. They spend hours on the phone with airline companies, cruise lines, and hotels canceling bookings and trying to benefit their clients.

Travel advisors will spend weeks or months each year traveling around the globe and discovering new and fun adventures for their clientele. An online booking site has never been to Hawaii or on a European River Cruise so how would they know what to recommend you do while on your trip. Most travel advisors are a part of a larger agency. In this agency different people will know more about different destinations. Let’s say Susie is wanting to travel to Ireland and she calls a travel agency. An advisor who has been to Ireland or has knowledge of there will help Susie make her travel dreams come true. This is where an online booking site falls short. It lacks the personal experience of knowing your client and seeing the pure joy on their face or seeing pictures when their dreams finally came true.

Many travel advisors have been flooded with countless trips to cancel and reschedule due to the Covid-19 outbreak. They have called and emailed airlines, cruise lines, even hotels, and spent many hours sitting on hold waiting to talk to something that has a real heartbeat for the benefit of their clients. At times, they do things for people who aren’t even their clients. Online booking sites would have left you high and dry. Jessica Siregar, a travel advisor for Travel Leaders of Jacksonville, recently had to help a friend in her unsuccessful attempt in cancelling a trip to New Jersey that was booked on Orbitz. Siregar called the Orbitz customer service lines but could never get through. With her contacts at United Airlines, she was able to get her friend’s tickets out of the system, cancel her flight, and received a waiver to rebook the trip. With a travel agent, trying times like these wouldn’t seem so scary. You could have confidence that you are being taken care of and thought of as an individual, not just a number in a system. So let’s sit and think, are travel advisors really extinct or just placed behind technology?

A great travel advisor:

· Takes your ideas from ordinary to extraordinary

Your advisor can take the simplest idea and transform it into something amazing. For example, dinner on a moonlit beach with candles and a butler.

· Knows the world

Not only does a travel advisor explore the word to find new, exciting adventures, they have a network of contacts through tour operators, airlines, cruise lines, destination specialists, and fellow travel advisors. They are able to utilize their knowledge and contacts to help you know the world.

· Compliments your travel style

As your relationship with your travel advisor grows, he/she learns what your likes and dislikes are. For example, one may be an adrenaline junky and the other may just want to lay on the beach, or even somewhere in the middle. Through conversation the travel advisor picks up on your travel style and implements it in your travel adventures.

· Expands your horizons

He/she can take each item of your bucket list and make them remarkable. Your next trip could be to Maui spending time on the beach soaking in the sun or seeing an amazing sunrise atop Haleakala before biking from the mountaintop to the beach or even seeing the total eclipse in Antarctica in December of 2021.

· Can handle anything

Your travel advisor not only meticulously plans your trip but virtually travels with you day to day. From a simple airport pickup to touring the opal mines in Coober Pedy, Australia, your travel advisor is there for you through your entire adventure to assist as needed.

The travel advisor has been very invaluable to their clients and other travelers during these unprecedented, ever changing times. They have assisted their clients in navigating their refunds or travel postponements with much grace and knowledge. So the next time you are ready to plan remember your travel advisor and their value.

Some information included is courtesy of Virtuoso Travel.