Travel Consultants
The 'new' breed of travel agent
by Sally Watkins

What can a Travel Agent/Consultant do for you? In brief, a good one will add value to your trip.

That value can take many forms. What’s most important to you for this trip? Best price, ambience, logistics, workable schedule with children or senior citizens in tow, "champagne on a beer budget" lodging, location for being able to walk to things, time savings in getting it all booked, peace of mind of knowing the things booked are known to be reliable, knowing you aren't sending your deposit money to a fly-by-night operation?

Both people in the profession and outside of it generally use the terms ‘travel agent’ and ‘travel consultant’ interchangeably. But there's a distinction, and it helps to know which you want at any given time.

A good "travel agent", to most, is someone who can make an airline computer system turn flips. She rarely just takes the answer the computer gives her, doing so only if it has come up with a super deal. Instead, she "asks the question another way", puts in variables; thinks creatively about how else to get what she wants...mixing different dates, times, destinations, routings, airports, airlines and combinations of those. She asks other agents in the office if they have ideas. She takes it as a personal challenge to find the best of whatever the client needs, be that lowest price or best schedule or easiest itinerary or combination of those. Her skills stay honed because she does so much of this five days a week.

As things have evolved in the last few years, a good agent will have for international trips a "stable" of consolidators/discounters that she has found reliable and able to offer good prices, and she will check those for clients. (Most often, a good Travel Agent has a favorite inside-agent at those consolidator/discounter agencies, too...someone she has found to be able to do with that entity's computer equipment what she knows she can do with hers.)

Such travel agents are usually also very good at doing hotels or rental cars or tours or packages, or anything else that will come up in that computer. Note that I said "in that computer" … remember that for later. Many of these folks evolve into being corporate/business agents … they spend all their time finding the best fares/schedules for business clients of the agency. You'd better believe those companies want things done rapidly, efficiently and RIGHT. Typically, corporate agents are smart, fast, constantly in motion, never getting flustered no matter how many times Traveler X needs to change flights in one day, or how many flights get cancelled by the airline for Traveler Z.

These are the sort of agents you want when pretty much all you need is to find the best airfare that's out there to go to Europe or anywhere else. Obviously, agents "dedicated" to a particular corporation's business, or to handling travel for several businesses and nothing else, are not available to you. But some of the "hybrids" will be: agents who handle lots of corporate travel but also handle individual travelers looking for air and maybe a few other computer-related things. But we’re still talking "travel agents" here, remember.

These folks often do not choose to attend the many "in service education" seminars and workshops that come to town, and do not generally subscribe to the many travel-industry publications. For what they do, there's really no reason to do those things: they just need to know how to make that computer turn flips, remember? And that's not taught at trade seminars.

Now: Travel Consultant. This is someone who lives and breathes travel a good part of every single day. She may or may not be a computer whiz. I know some fabulous ones, but some like me don't operate the airline computer systems at all ... we rely on those smart and fast "travel agents" in the office to find what we need for our clients.

Travel Consultants attend many seminars and other "continuing education" type programs that are available, eagerly gathering up new publications and ideas, learning about new properties that have opened, new airline routes that will be announced, and generally staying as "on top" of things going on in the industry as possible. They usually subscribe to several industry publications as well as "regular" publications like National Geographic Traveler, Country Inns and Conde-Nast Traveler.

The longer one is in the business, the more subscriptions seem to get added, such as Paris Notes, Easy Escapes, France Today and many on-line newsletters. Her personal library of travel books and maps grows; the bookmarked subjects in both home and office computers grow; and the Travel Consultant is keenly interested in seeing that the agency has the most recent editions of the best industry publications, such as the STAR Guide or Weissman Report.

 A Travel Consultant is usually widely traveled, both on personal trips and industry educational trips, and continues to travel. Every trip becomes a way to garner new information and have new experiences that can be utilized on the behalf of the Consultant's clients. A good Consultant will also network like crazy, with agents in her own town and with those she meets on industry trips ... "picking their brains" for new information.

 A Travel Consultant will spend time interviewing new clients who make their way to her. Questions will involve what type of trips the client has taken before and enjoyed/hated, family interests when traveling, how frequently/infrequently they like to change overnight locations when on a trip, whether the decor and amenities of a hotel room are of high or low importance, whether they like to pre-plan everything or leave some open nights, whether they need/want help carrying baggage or plan to travel light and are able to carry it all, whether they like to or have driven in other countries, whether automatic transmission car is important, ages of any children traveling and how much or little those children have traveled, what expectations the client has for a trip, whether the client wants the consultant to simply follow up on things clients suggests or make suggestions to client or a combination of those things...and perhaps most important -- what's the budget?

Then a Travel Consultant "does her thing," which is to use the myriad resources (not just computer resources and a hotel index, remember) she has available to put together the trip for the client, providing things such as train schedules and ticket prices, restaurant tips, walking tour information, how to get to the hotel from the airport, good daytrips, the best local bakery or gelato place, private tour guides if desired, museum suggestions and tips. And one of the primary resources used is the Consultant's head, which is the repository of not only a great deal of travel she has done herself, but of "de-briefing" scores of clients after their trips to find out what new things, great things, awful things, they have to report.

What I have described are the two extremes in the travel business: Travel Agent and Travel Consultant.  More commonly you will find that it's all a continuum, and while some agents may be 90% agent and 10% consultant, others will be the reverse, and still others may be 50-50.  YOU just need to be clear what you are looking for, and then ask questions until you know you've found that "species."  Don't be shy about interviewing travel agency personnel, or about asking to meet the manager, telling her what you want, and asking who on her staff she recommends.  Then TALK to that person. If things don't "click," then move on and try elsewhere.