Guests and Travel Agents?

I was just wondering....how many guests used your travel agents you provided? I am getting a lot of people saying they can find their own packages cheaper on their own.... so, how do I go about blocking off rooms through our travel agent? I don't know how to do this? And how do I go about asking if they will be using our travel agent or their own?

That is a tough question because ALL of my guests used my travel agent. I would suggest you tell them to call your agent and tell them the price they found somewhere else and see if your TA can honour that. My TA said she would honour anyone's prices, as long as they were legitimate prices.

Well, Tammy might correct me, but I always thought that TAs could negotiate some of the best rates, especially if you do a room block or a group rate. A lot of people say that about 80% of the people you expect will go, will - so maybe base you group block numbers on that. I also let my guests know that we have a group block set aside and to contact Tammy to make reservations. Kind of like assuming they'll use Tammy, and if they don't then that's fine... but only giving them the only option until they ask - you know?

i'd say about 75% of my guests used Tammy (TA), but i don't know for sure. once we realized that Dreams was running a promotion, and that most people were booking a.s.a.p. with this promotion - we ended up not getting a room block. people were on their own to book - and if they ended up paying a higher rate becuase they waited - oh well!

we only told people about Tammy too - but they definitely went out on their own to reasearch too.

Most of my family is pretty lazy, er "busy". lol, I'm not worried about that! But, if they research on their own, that's fine too... it's not like I can tell them not to!

exactly - it worked out well for us. we gave everyone the option of using Tammy, and that was their "easiest" option, or they could go on their own. my main reason for using a TA was I just didn't want to deal with all of the questions - i book travel for myself all week long, i don't want to do it for anyone else!

I can acutally find rates cheaper myself by going online too... so it is hard to tell my guests to pay the higher rate. I wonder how that works. My TA is my friend too, and that is why I am using her... Do some TA's charge more than others? Or are her rates higher because she is new at being a TA?

I dunno, but I would let her know that you have guests finding better rates. Maybe she can renegoatiate or match the prices. If I were a guest, I'd go for the better rate too! Friend or not, I'm sure she doesn't want to lose out on the business

I think a lot of the time the problem is that online websites such as orbitz,expedia etc have great prices but you take the rist of getting bumped to another hotel etc....I dont know about you but for my wedding thats not a risk I'm willing to take, I'd rather pay the extra money and not worry. My friend had a horible experience once with orbitz (like getting bumped off of his flight waitting hours for the next flight and then ended up in a little hotel in Cancun with big bugs everywhere instead of the buetiful resort he had paid for) but booked with them before and it was fine so who knows. Lets just say he will never go through them again.