by beth king

Created on: November 05, 2009

The title of this article may be a bit misleading by giving the impression that when you make your own reservation you are paying a separate fee in addition to the cost of the trip.

In a manner of speaking you are paying a commission, however, you are paying it regardless of how you book. When you bypass the travel agent, in essence what you are doing is paying the company commission directly by saving them the amount they would have had to pay a travel agent.

The way this works, for the majority of the travel industry, is the cruise line, tour operator or hotel offers a commission or percentage of the cost as payment for the travel agent booking the trip. This is built in to their pricing structure generally across the board. If you book directly with the line or company, even though they are saving on the commission they would have paid out, they do not pass that savings on to you, the guest.

There are a few reasons for this being the case.

1. Since the majority of travel, in particular vacation and leisure travel, is still being booked by a travel agent, the suppliers do not want to alienate the segment that gives them the most business by undercutting them.

2. Most companies, tour operators and cruise lines are not in the business of providing the individual level of service that is required manage the client booking. This means they do not have the need to hire a larger staff to provide this service.

This does not mean that you cannot book directly with most companies, as a passenger, however you do not get any financial benefit from doing so. In fact, in many cases the complete opposite is true. When you book your vacation through a travel agent that represents more then one product or line, they are working for you, not a specific vendor. This means that they are working to save you money, they act as an advocate for you and their goal is to book you on the right product, choosing from several available.

In addition to the potential cost savings, the amount of attention and service you receive from a travel agent is far greater in most cases then you would get from the company directly. Most times when you deal directly with the travel vendor you are dealing with whoever answers the phone, you are not assigned one agent that gets to know you therefore you are unable to build a relationship with.

There are some exceptions to this, especially with cruise lines. They now have an area that is set up to booking individual guests and you may be assigned one specific person to work with however, again, you are limited to that one product. You still do not save any money since the commission that the line pays is not given to the person booking you as a percent of a flat fee. Once you move to another line or company you start all over again. It is far better to build a relationship with one person since your ongoing business becomes much more valuable to them and they work harder to keep you coming back.

In the past there have been times that a cruise line decided to bypass the travel agent and market directly to the guest, thereby saving the commissions. In every case this resulted in failure. Those companies have either gone out of business or had their bottom line suffer and have had to change their philosophy.

In summery you do pay commission when booking a trip but you pay it regardless of where and how you book. Instead of allowing the tour operator, hotel or cruise line to just save on the commissions they build in to the price, why not use a travel professional who's goal is to cater to your needs, not that of one company?

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