Reasons to Book The Details of Your Vacation on Your Own

Back in the 80s and 90s the travel agent was the number one place to go to in order to get yourself booked up for a vacation, unless you were lucky enough to catch a late minute deal of Ceefax of course. With the emergence of the internet these travel agencies clung on for as long as they could, switching to online operations and slashing prices to bring in more consumers, but this has largely been in vain.

There are still some who help to keep this industry on its feet and if you fall into that category then it is time to make the move from booking package deals and organized holidays, and instead look to book each and every detail of the trip yourself. All you need is a computer, an internet connection, the dates of travel and your bank card, and here is why it is time to embrace booking your own vacation.

Cheaper

The biggest benefit of not using a travel agent when booking your vacation is that you can save a lot more money when you do this on your own. Whilst it is true that some travel agents would get good deals on flights and hotels, once their own service and admin charges were added it didn’t always come out as cheap as many thought. When booking flights for example you may find high prices directly with the airline but there are many flight aggregators like JustFly.com who scour the web to get you the lowest fares on flights, either form the airlines or from 3rd party operators.

In terms of hotels we are also in a golden era where you can get great deals on cheap hotel rooms around the world. A great tip if you can’t find the price that you want is to speak to the hotel directly. Very often they will do better deals over the phone than they show online.

The same goes for travel experiences, you can find links on many travel forums to book directly with the company offering a certain activity or tour, and that will be cheaper than booking it through a provider, who of course will want a cut.

Tailor-Made

Booking in the travel agent used to consist of reading through a brochure and selecting your hotel based on a handful of well planned photos and a list of amenities. Now you can fully research every detail of your vacation, decide where the best place to stay is and select the perfect hotel for your needs. The same goes for flights, you can now select the flight time which you want and not just the flight times which you are given. Travel agents would always do their best to get you the best vacation for you, but in doing yourself with all of the resources that you can find online, you’ll be a able to do a better job than they ever could.

Research

Because of the huge amount of information online you can get to know the place where you’ll be spending your vacation and learn from others who have been there before. This option to research online means that you will have no surprises on your vacation and you will know where to go and what to do ahead of your trip, to help you maximize your time away.

Full Control

Ultimately when you book your own vacation the onus will be on you to arrange everything and take responsibility of the entire trip. Now some may see this as a negative versus a travel agent who looks after everything but having full control is always better. Any mistakes are your own, any changes can be made with ease and every detail of the vacation will be yours to make and manage. To ensure protection on your bookings be sure to always try and book on your credit card which will offer purchase protection. In truth travel agents very rarely protected tourists as they original pledged and this left a lot of holiday makers out of pocket after issues had taken place with their hotel on flights.

For your next trip why not look to do it independently rather than relying on out-of-date travel agents and the packages which they offer? You won’t regret it.