Booking long haul with travel agent or airline ?

As per earlier posts I am looking for flights to China for later in the year. I am pretty sure I know the exact route/timings we want to take.

Booking with the KLM website it comes out at one price, while on the phone to TrailFinders the price is about an extra €80. In terms of the cost of the entire holiday that €80 is not a significant %.

I have heard good things and bad things about Trailfinders, including getting shunted around from Trailfinders to the airline and back again when looking to change ticket details. Also, it appears that it is only necessary to put a deposit on with Trailfinders whereas the airline is looking for the full cost up front. I have also noticed on various airline websites that you can't do things like online check-in for agent issued fares, so I guess that would be the same as for Trailfinders.

Does anyone have a view on whether the extra €80 might be money well spent for the comfort of dealing with an agent if things need to change later on, or whether it's better to have the €80 in my pocket and just go with the airline fare ?

z

Hi

I am going to China in the summer (booked with KLM) and the cheapest way i could find was with KLM thru Amsterdam. I would prefer to deal with the airline direct. A large airline like KLM is bound to have a rep in most airports. Trailfinders wont. You should check with Trailfinder and see if the fare quoted allows changes. (mine with KLM does not)

If you need internal flights , go to the air china website. Air China can be substantially cheaper on their own website than thru a seach engine. You will need to register to use site, they take visa. Site is not user friendly to english speakers but is worth the effort. (eg I got 3 adult tickets from Guilin to Shanghai one way for approx 130 euro , all other sites were about 130 euros each.)

Try http://www.travelocity.com/ for flights-only travel.

They can be cheaper than booking direct (can also be more expensive, and there seems to be no logic which way it is).

I've used them a few times, and found them OK to deal with.

Most recently I've used them to book a family holiday to Orlando, and have had no problems accessing the Virgin Atlantic site to assign seats etc.

For the reassurance of a Oneworld sort of ticket that you get from Trailfinders rather than if you book each leg separately - it can be worth it.
We booked Cork - Sri Lanka via Trailfinders last year. First off Emirates had a schedule change a couple of months before departure which meant that our Cork-London Aer lingus flight was no longer at the right time - Trailfinders changed that flight at no charge.
On the way back, the flight was late in to Heathrow plus our bags had not been checked all the way through and by the time we changed terminal our flight to Cork had closed. But as we had oneworld tickets the Aer lingus staff let us on carrying our backpacks. Beat a night sleeping in the departure lounge!

This is a very straight forward flight. DUB/ORK to AMS and then onwards to China. It will be KL tickets all the way (as Aer Lingus Codeshare on the Ire-AMS routes).
You would be mad to pay 80euro to add a middleman. If anything goes wrong you would be far better off dealing with KL yourself. It is not the Ryanair/Aer Lingus experience, you will get someone to speak to within a minute or two of ringing their customer service number.
Also you cannot do anything on the KL website (seat selection etc) if you have a agent issued ticket.

I would only use Trailfinders for complex multi-airline or RTW flights.

soy said:

I would only use Trailfinders for complex multi-airline or RTW flights.

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Agreed - only exception can be that sometimes trailfinders (and other agents selling packages) can have access to "IT" (Inclusive Tour) fares which can be cheaper if you're booking through the agent in combination with some accomodation ... However in Zag's case this doesn't seem to be happening as Trailfinders are more expensive on the airfare alone.

steelblue said:

If you need internal flights , go to the air china website. Air China can be substantially cheaper on their own website than thru a seach engine. You will need to register to use site, they take visa. Site is not user friendly to english speakers but is worth the effort. (eg I got 3 adult tickets from Guilin to Shanghai one way for approx 130 euro , all other sites were about 130 euros each.)

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Cool - I couldn't find anywhere last year that I could buy anything other than full economy fare tickets on domestic routes in China when purchasing from outside the country. I wonder if you can do this on other airlines as well now ... as Air China is only one of a huge number of domestic carriers now.

Enjoy Guilin - The Li River is pretty specatcular ... If you want to stay somewhere really weird and kind of cool while you're there - google "Hotel of Modern Art" - it's a very bizarre luxury hotel in a sculpture park about 30mins south of Guilin itself.