Self booking Vs Using a Travel Agent

I had a worse experience in booking cruise via an agent. They always have a huge cut on the actual amount of cruise ticket. When I learned this I never booked cruise via any agent rather I started booking it online. I did my last cruise booking through Cruisemeout where they gave me insurance cover of $25,00,000 on every ticket. Also, I got a good discount on booking my second cruise holiday from them.

When our plans are complex, we turn to a TA. A straight forward trip, we can handle ourselves.

I do my own homework because I find it fun. We have no need for airfare but occasionally a pre-cruise hotel. I check a dozen different websites to find the best deals, check those against the cruise lines site, and then discuss with a couple of different TAs.

My last cruise, going with American Airlines to book the cruise gave me about $200 in extra freebies vs direct with RCCL.

I have found that when the cruise line books the flight it is late the day of debarkation... sometimes the last one of the day. So what do you do all day? ..... Book a shore tour in port from the ship (we do that sometimes anyway). Why do they do it? It's the cheapest for them. They also have you fly into the port of embarkation at O'dark-thirty, I don't like that time of day.

Booking with a TA is more of a convenience thing. I would never book air and hotel through a cruise line. They book what is convenient for them, not you. I could never understand why a cruise line would book a passenger on a 10:00 or 11:00 am flight home. Oh wait, I know....they get their kickbacks for those early flights. Silly me.

We used to do all our own bookings directly with the cruise lines. Then we discovered that our Travel Agent was able to get us better rooms not listed online. She has switched us to better accommodations when they opened up. She also gets us price reductions as they became available. We received bottles of wine, extra onboard credits and dinners in the specialty restaurants on longer cruises. It doesn't cost us extra and we participate in cabin assignments so we are still in control. The longer that we deal with her, the more perks we get, it seems. We refer our friends to her & they are always satisfied. She will even work for us on holidays and at night not that we ask her to do this. She is just on top of things. She has pointed out why a cabin that we have chosen is not right for us & we have been most grateful because her reasons are spot on. From her years of experiences, she notices things that we don't see right away. N ow that we are retired, we just don't have the time to do all this work ourselves. It is enough work just choosing the shore excursions. We always do that ourselves.

I would to... The whole idea of a travel agent is ease as well as getting the best price and discounts we as normal consumers cant.

I always book the air, hotels and car rentals myself. A couple of times I took a screen shot of prices to a TA who could not match the price, so now I completely eliminate the middle person.

We do the research and pick our favorite itinerary then call our representative at Carnival or Princess ( the only two we have yet sailed) for the cruise only (sometimes shuttle). Then we find a flight and hotel on our own. Early on we let a TA do it all. We had flights that left at odd times and rarely direct flights, hotels near the airport not the beach or cruise-port and figured we could do better ourselves...and we have.

We booked our first cruise with a travel agent and would never do it again! She was a "cruise specialist" according to her training, but we had nothing but problems with her. We now have a great PVP with Carnival named Heidi who does the booking after I do the preliminary work.