Making Vacation Plans Over the 'Net? 21
rice_burners_suck asks: "For some reason beyond my comprehension, a whole bunch of family members are coming in to visit over the next month. The busiest weekend will take place when I'll have six guests to entertain, and I don't know where I'll take them or stay with them. I'd like to have a good time without breaking the piggy bank. Where, on the Internet, can I find good vacation places and compute a budget? I'm thinking of a service similar to AAA, but online. If something like this doesn't exist, how could I go about implementing one myself?"
There's a better way and it's NOT online... (Score:2, Informative)
There are good reasons why... Many times when checking airfares from online services you aren't getting all prices, for instance since Southwest opts out of all online GDS systems like SABRE, Worldspan and so on. The only way to get the lowest price is to include them as well. This doesn't even get into negotiated rates which many travel agents have (mainly corporate agencies) with carriers where they receive X% off a certain carrier.
Travel agents have over the years built up a wealth of knowledge through their travels via FAM (familiarization) trips and ID25 tickets (tickets purchased at 25% of the coach fare, very common before airlines turned into the dickweeds they are today). There's a good chance they can budget that for you or speak with a client who has done this before and has a good grasp of the figures.
Other reason for using a travel agent include the fact that when airlines have schedule changes, or worse, change equipment (switch to smaller equipment because of a flight not meeting yield) your prized window/aisle seat is lost, airlines are notorious for not calling you. These kinds of changes show up in agency res queues and they can handle it for you.
I worked for American Airlines as a reservations agent and later as a SABRE developer and was a travel agency manager for a few years and without question I only use knowledgable travel agents.