Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone! As we are currently planning an anniversary trip to Ireland, this holiday seems like the perfect occasion to talk about our vacation and what we’ve been doing to plan for an overseas trip.
As much as I want to go on this trip, I was genuinely overwhelmed with planning for a trip in a foreign country I’ve never been to. I contacted a local travel agent to help do the leg work for us so we could focus our time on other things we have going on. Having her make the actual reservations and research took a huge list of to-dos off my plate. Here’s what you should know about working with a travel agent:
Most travel agents do not charge for the majority of their services; they earn money from the hotels, transportation services and tourist attractions that they book for you. Ours didn’t charge us to book our flights for us, though I’ve heard that some do. Our agent said that the only charges we could expect was if we needed to make changes to our reservations AFTER they were booked. Because of that, we spent a good amount of time going back and forth with her to get the itinerary just right before committing.
In my initial email to our agent, I tried to include as much information about us and how we like to travel as possible. My husband and I aren’t tourist attraction, group-tour, big tour bus kind of people. Though travel agents do work with group tour organizations, they can also create something custom for you as well, so don’t be afraid to venture off the traditional route if that’s what you want. We’re renting a car and planning to road trip through the country and instead of paying for hotel rooms, we’ve opted to buy vouchers for a network of bed and breakfasts throughout the country as they are much cheaper. We won’t be spending a ton of time in a room and we wanted the flexibility to plan out our route as we went.
Speaking of vouchers, I made sure we had a list of properties that the vouchers covered so I could be sure there were enough locations and availability for our trip. I also asked about any other fees that could be charged to us when using the vouchers so there wouldn’t be any surprises. We will still likely book the bed and breakfast reservations ahead of time so that we aren’t in a bind at the last minute, but it was nice to lock in the rest of our trip without having to have our whole itinerary set in stone.
The first thing we bought was our flights and those had to be paid for at the time of purchase- I just gave our agent our card information over the phone and she handled the rest. For the car rental, hotel reservations and B&B vouchers, our agent quoted us one “package” price per person. We had to pay a deposit to reserve everything, and then she gave us a date when the rest of the balance was due.
Overall, it’s been really nice to outsource the logistics of planning the trip. It’s 100% something we could have done ourselves, but considering that it didn't cost us any extra money, it was great to not have to do all of the “paperwork” involved. Have you worked with a travel agent? What did you think? Where would you like to travel next?
Hey, I’m Meghan
I’m here sharing content all about pursuing your own version of more and loving how you feel doing it. If that sounds good to you, stick around and let’s be friends!
