Paper brochures are still useful in travel agencies but

In the last 4 weeks, I have been searching for where we should go next on holidays. As usual, we have some key criteria: hot and sunny weather, regions to explore, trendy boutique design hotels available and the sea. As every year, we spent a bit of time in several brick and mortar travel agencies in London Hight St Kensington. For the third year runnning, Trailfinders is in my opinion the best option to organize your trip, give you advices and quote you a reasonable price for the whole package. And also, they are flexible enough to book you hotels that are not necessarly in their brochures.

But back to my point. For this research, having several destinations paper brochures from Trailfinders or Kuoni definetely helped us to  rull out certain destinations (weather conditions, too expensive...) and have a broad idea about where we wanted to stay (destinations and hotels). Usually paper brochures give you an idea of the hotel prices and room types options. They also give you indication about extras (honeymoon packages, upgrade). So when you come to the travel agent, you have a good idea about how much you will be paying and you don't waste too much time looking at several options with the agent checking his computer. You usually have some good pictures of each hotel (Trailfinders dedicate half a page for each hotel).

When we came to Trailfinders, we knew which hotels we wanted to stay, which dates we wanted to fly (away and return) and airlines we would fly with.

Then come the dilemna of which room types you should book in each hotel. This is something that a paper brochure has difficulties to answer. What's the diffence between a superior room, a luxury room, a deluxe room, a suite, an ocean view, a garden view...You end up looking for too many options and you are lost. And you can't expect the travel agent to know every single room type of all hotels they work with. This is where the online review world helps a lot. I explored TripAdvisor, VibeAgent and Vinivi to check the hotels latest reviews and more importantly the pictures or videos loaded by consumers. There are plenty of them that could help you in your choice. And you can check the latest stays as well. A picture taken 2 years ago at hotel might not be relevant if the hotel went through a renovation phase.

Now we know which room types we would like to go for. Next ideal step would be to book a room number. The new venture TripKick is trying this in several cities in the US.

Comments

[Heather]

I came across a concierge website that plans your trip for you. Just tell them what you want and they make it happen. I got so sick of looking through websites and trying to struggle to make my plans. This seems like such a great idea for someone that doesnt have the time to do it themselves. The website is www.theonesd.com and the password to access it is: rouge

These guys do anything for their members, the service list covers just about anything!