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Subscribe to RSSAnyone can quickly book a cheap flight between U.S. cities. But when your travel plans are complicated, sometimes it helps to hand over research duties to an expert — for a fee.
Here's a cheat sheet to a few travel services with great track records at helping travelers.
Fortnighter, tailored itinerary-planning
Let's say you want to know the basics about a destination you're visiting, but the information in guidebooks about the latest restaurants and shops may be out of date, and you don't have time to do much online research. Enter Fortnighter, which charges about $100 to $200, depending on the length and complexity of your trip, to provide a detailed cheat sheet planning your itinerary.
The site posts a sample itinerary. These typically three or four page documents are written by a noted travel writer who has fresh, on-the-ground intelligence.
Jetsetter's personalized itinerary-planning service
Honeymoons are one example of a type of trip where you want everything to go perfectly, because, if a trip goes bad, people can start pointing fingers at each other. Why not shove off the planning responsibility into the hands of an expert. That's goal of the flash-sale site Jetsetter, which launched an itinerary-planning service this summer that's similar to what Fortnighter offers.
Its contributors have written for major travel magazines and guidebooks and they usually live in the locations they're writing about, so they have up-to-date information. If Jetsetter were a coffee chain, it would be Starbucks, compared to Fortnighter, which would be like the independent Chicago coffee chain Intelligentsia. As with coffee, relying on a big corporate service has advantages and disadvantages.
Cranky Concierge, air travel planning assistance
This digitally savvy update of the old-fashioned travel agency offers a team of concierges, who help you pick optimal flights and take action to re-route you in the event of an emergency cancels your flight (hurricane, etc.) They'll book your tickets, too, but it's not necessary — unlike traditional travel agents, they're not incentivized via commissions to steer you to a particular airline or other travel product even if it's not the best one for you.
Cranky Concierge coverage varies in price by how many people are traveling and the complexity of the itinerary. For example, a family of four can pay $60 for round-trip for coverage that includes: finding child and infant fares if available; picking the best available seats (given your family's size and the ages of your kids); fielding your questions about airline rules for strollers, car seats, and breast milk; re-book your family in the event of a flight cancellation; and follow up with airlines in any dispute resolution, should something goes amiss during your flights.
Mygola for specific trip-planning questions
Ask an expert to do online research for you to answer your specific travel question, and pay a tip. To ask more than one question for a trip, pay $30. Or buy a year's worth of access to asking questions for $90. Pluses: No forms to fill out, no sales pitches to wade through. The experts appear to be especially strong on recommending flights, hotels, and sightseeing jaunts in India and Asia.
Note of caution: The theory is that you get what you pay for, with better answers when you pay, but how will you know if the answer is accurate unless you have something to compare it to? If time allows, ask your question in an online forum for free, first, on a site like Reddit, Lonely Planet's ThornTree, or MetaFilter.
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Leave a Comment:
If you're that easily frazzled by traveling inconveniences and surprises, why travel at all? Just stay home.
For those who can't cope, there's literally hundreds of these personal travel concierge services that are more than willing to take your money. They all taut the importance of a smooth operating vacation --- for a hefty price. In the infocommercials such as this article, the concierge services seek to frighten unsophisticated travellers as to all the discomforts of foreign cultures and of course, the many ways the concierge can assuage the aggravations. Ultimately, the sales pitch is the familiar "scare them enough until they loosen their wallet." This news article is typical.
To make travel planning a little easier, and to get a better geographical overview for building an itinerary using your guidebook, try looking up GuidebookPlus (www.guidebookplus.com). It maps all of your guidebook's pages. GuidebookPlus also maps Wikipedia, accommodation and user-contributed photographs, and can plot a route for you between places & pages in your guidebook.
Hi Frank,
Thanks for your comment. I realize that these concierge services aren't worthwhile for many travelers. But, as I wrote, Honeymoons are one example of a type of trip where you want everything to go perfectly, because, if a trip goes bad, people can start pointing fingers at each other. Why not hand off the work to someone else, who can be blamed if anything goes wrong. Family travel is another example I use in the article. If you are caring for a one-year old at home, you don't have time to do all the online research for looking up infant fares, understanding the rules for carrying on services. I've also picked the rare services where I've met the people who run them, and I have seen examples of what work they've provided for clients. I excluded a lot of other services from this short list, too.
That said, you bring up great points. Thanks again for the comment.
What about your local AAA office? They have a full service travel agency available to members and non-members.
As a tour operator and travel agent for the last 25 years, my thought is those are all services have always been provided by a good travel agent. I guess that is why we are so busy, lately, in spite of a recession, that people want some help with complicated itineraries. I keep hearing horror stories from the do-it-yourselfers that come back into the agency after a bad experience on their own. Just to get a word in for travel agents (since the President and Tina Faye think we don't exist); the only places that I charge fees is for airline tickets (and we earn our money there between schedule changes, ancillary fees, problems with seats/flights and airline stupidity) plus an hourly itinerary fee when we do complicated foreign independent travel. I usually waive the hourly fee for my regular clients that do more than one long expensive trip per year if they are buying the big elements from us. Other than that, the vendors pay us and clients get our services for FREE so I can't understand why anyone would do a complicated trip without a travel advisor. Most people don't operate on themselves, go to court without a lawyer or fix their own plumbing but they send themselves half way around the world without any experience and hope for the best. My tip, if there is a travel agent left in your town, they are very good at what they do as they have survived the race to the bottom on the internet, so stop in and find out what a joy it can be to have an agent do your travel planning.
Here's another one I found - Travel Ninjas on Yellowleg.com -
They have a panel of travel experts - ranging from freelance travel enthusiasts to travel book authors - all for a different price, for a whole 30 days of unlimited consulting. They also answer one-off questions for a fixed price, but you don't get to choose who answers those.
I used it for my trip to Southeast Asia and found it extremely useful. It's not just the standard trip planning you can do using guidebooks/internet search. These guys told me of special places to suit my exact tastes, great little hangouts to mingle with locals, etc.