Destination Travel & Tours

In these days of Internet, people often think its better to buy on-line to get lower fare and faster service. The New York Times did a comparison of making travel plans on-line vs through a travel agent.  Here is what they found:

Nearly every time, travel agents bested the Internet big boys on both price (the objective part of the test) and service (what you might call the essay question). In other words, the agents suggested alternate routes, gave advice on visas and just generally acted, well, more human than their computer counterparts. (All research was all done in mid-January for trips in March.)
You can read more here.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is! I had first hand experience by buying tickets online using Orbitz. A friend called to mention the round-trip fare of $554 including taxes from Chicago to Mumbai on Orbitz. Note, the total price was $40 for fare and $514 for taxes and other airport charges. It was too low to resist even for a travel agent so we ended up buying four tickets at different travel dates for family visits.  First, came the good news from Orbitz confirming the reservation. See the attached email from Orbitz. We called our family in India letting them know about the plans, with everyone jumping for joy, we were all smiles. Then, the next morning I was unfortunately brought to the real world. Orbitz claimed that the airline did not have enough seats and thus cancelling my booking. In fact, they cancelled all the bookings even though they were at different times. I thought that this was just a scam, thus deteriorating my hopes of finding a good ticket price online. See the attached cancellation email from Orbitz. As you can imagine, the smiles turned to frowns and everyone was unhappy. With this in mind, I quickly started joking about this with my friends and all was well, but that lost time and excitement can never be replaced.

Lessons Learned – The Internet is great at bringing the efficiency and lowering cost of doing business. It has helped me to start my own small business over the Internet and with lower cost than renting my own office and creating a personal line with associated office expenses. This in turn has helped me to pass on the savings to you while still providing personalized services and look after your interest. However, with the Orbitz experience I have learned that you still have to watch for what you are getting into.  In addition to this, I have also learned there is no substitution for personalized service, which is my number one priority. This experience has made me think to create a new motto of the company --- “We make sure you GO!”.

Please note I am not discouraging you or anyone for that matter to purchase items from the internet. So, if you can please share your experiences as comments so others as well as myself can learn from this experience.
NOTE: When I send you the confirmation e-mail , it is from the airline with seat assignments and you will NOT have to wait 24 hours.