Outsourcing Your Vacation?

Are you too busy to go on vacation? Do you need someone to go for you? Please don’t! But you can outsource your vacation planning, your travel arrangements, even meeting and event planning — if you have the right agent.

Years ago, travel agents got a guaranteed percentage of airline tickets, and very few people actually bought tickets from airlines. But as travel costs went up, many airlines cut or dropped their commissions to agents, causing a huge panic among travel agents that lasted for years. Many travellers stopped using travel agencies altogether. The with the advent of the Internet browser, online ticket sales erupted onto the scene such as Orbitz, Kayak, Priceline, and Cheaptickets. And yes, I used those services and did everything myself. I didn’t do too badly.

But what’s funny, if you look into today’s travel agencies, they can often beat web prices and make you offers that you will never see on the web. Really!

What’s more,  they offer a lot more services than they used too. No more do they just make sure that you have a kosher-dairy meal with a window since in a non-exit row.

Think bigger — think about meeting planning — event planning — tour planning — team building events — all handled by today’s new breed of travel agencies. This is a way to outsource many of your needs without even having to ask your virtual assistant to do it for you. As we move into the world of virtual assistants, we need to remember that we all have assistants in all part of our lives, and we need to bring back the full service travel agency into the mix.

My travel agent, Arthur from Rich Worldwide Travel  is my travel concierge, and he is good at what he does. But he also has access to the full range of services from within his agency — and all you have to do is ask. There are plenty of agencies out there, and Rich Worldwide Travel is mine. If you haven’t booked travel with a full service agency lately, please reconsider. You might be spending too much money and too much time pretending to be a travel expert. Give yourself a break — call Arthur — call somebody!