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Working With a Bespoke Travel Agent (Ep. 10)

Are you like me and you've spent your life avoiding travel agents because you think you can get a better deal on your own, you enjoy planning and don't want to give it up, or because you think its going to cost you more?  Well, I needed some schooling on the subject, so I invited Jessica and Samuel Bouter of Away On Voyage to discuss the purpose of using a travel agent, and specifically a bespoke travel agent.

In this episode we'll discuss:

  • Meeting at the travel club
  • Orient Express route
  • Malta
  • Northern Italy and Venice
  • Romainian accent
  • Differences in travel agents (Bespoke travel)
  • How do you differ from traditional agencies?
  • the differences between planning for agent vs planning for someone else
  • Why use a travel agent?
  • Fitting to personality
  • Relationships with vendors
  • Relationships with destinations (hotels, events)
  • Relationships with local guides (website says you’re looking)
  • Cost difference / Perks? Upgrades
  • Help while on the road - desperate calls!
  • Travel insurance? Health (Mexico)
  • How an agent makes money?
  • School groups, weddings, family reunions, couple's retreat
  • Why book a cruise through an agent?
  • Where do you find the dividing line between choosing a bespoke, standard travel agent or DIY?
  • How you see your own travels changing with a growing family

Episode Resources

Transcript

Samuel (00:00:00):
I'm Samuel Bower.

Jessica (00:00:01):
I'm Jessica Bower.

Samuel (00:00:02):
We're with Wayan Voyage and you're listening to Travel Fuels Life.

Drew (00:00:17):
Hello everybody, and welcome to Travel Fuels Life, the show where we share stories, tips and inspiration to help you live a travel lifestyle. I'm your host, drew Hanish, and it's time to do some trip planning. And this brings us to a choice. We can either pull up all those hotel websites, airline websites, car rental sites, get the Google maps out thumb through all those guidebooks that we bought at the store, or we can simply find a travel agent in the area and then tell 'em exactly where we want to go, what we want to experience, and let them do all the heavy lifting. Well, from an effort standpoint, it sounds like a no-brainer to me, but for some reason I never contact a travel agent. So this is the reason that I wanted to do an episode around this, and I needed to reach out to Samuel and Jessica Bower.

(00:01:09):
They run a boutique travel agency. They call away on Voyage. I want to get the lowdown on why we should use travel agents, what they're all about, and see if they can change my mind. So since they live here in Greenville, South Carolina like I do, they decided to stop by for tea and a little pod discussion. So from the living room of my home, let's check out the conversation that I had with Samuel and Jessica. We met at a travel club that you guys had put on, and you were giving me all sorts of new places to consider traveling to. That was, you had just come back from a European trip. Yeah,

Samuel (00:01:52):
That was our 20 16, 3 and a half weeks in Europe.

Drew (00:01:55):
Okay. All right. And

Samuel (00:01:57):
Planes, trains, automobiles, everything.

Drew (00:02:00):
And so where did you travel on that particular trip?

Samuel (00:02:04):
We flew to London and then followed the old Orient Express route to Venice. Not on the Orient Express, but various like Eurostar and all the different French and Italian systems. And then we took a cruise for 13 days. 13 days around the Mediterranean. Oh, wow. And then did a few more days on land after that.

Drew (00:02:27):
And so when you traveled down to on the Orient Express, is that when you went all the way down to Croatia? Is that where it ends? Where? How far down does it go?

Samuel (00:02:36):
Yeah, the original one that we followed is just the London to Venice route.

Drew (00:02:40):
Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. Is Venice as crowded as I keep hearing?

Jessica (00:02:45):
It is pretty crowded, but there's still a lot of space. We actually wound up staying in a boutique hotel that had one of the largest private gardens, and it was glorious.

Drew (00:02:53):
Nice. So when you planned all of that out, how long were you in Venice itself?

Samuel (00:03:00):
One day.

Drew (00:03:01):
One day. Yeah. I mean, it's sounds like one of my trips. Kind of a shotgun from here to there. Next place, next place, next

Jessica (00:03:09):
Place. It was more about the journey than each location, really. Yeah,

Samuel (00:03:12):
Some places will stay a number of days, but really the whole point of this was the cruise and London, but then rather than rush to the cruise, we wanted to kind of enjoy a couple of the cities. So we stopped in Paris, Milan, and Venice.

Jessica (00:03:31):
So if you look at it like that, it was actually a very relaxed trip.

Drew (00:03:33):
Yeah. Yeah. So when you went to the Mediterranean cruise, what cities did you get to go to there?

Samuel (00:03:41):
Whole bunch.

Jessica (00:03:43):
We hit several spots in Greece. We hit Dubrovnik and Croatia, we hit Malta and we hit several places. In Italy.

Samuel (00:03:51):
Yeah, in Montenegro, or no, was it

Jessica (00:03:54):
That's true. Yeah. Kotor in Montenegro, yeah.

Drew (00:03:58):
Okay. And any place really just stick out to, I mean, that's a lot of great places. So I have a feeling they all stuck out in their own way. But was there any place that you were like, wow,

Samuel (00:04:07):
This is Malta, really? Yeah, Malta was really different.

Jessica (00:04:10):
It was definitely the winner,

Samuel (00:04:11):
Especially after Greece, which was not what we enjoy so much. But that's a personal preference.

Drew (00:04:19):
So what was it about Malta that attracted you?

Samuel (00:04:22):
Yeah, super clean, friendly.

Jessica (00:04:26):
There was so much history, and it was so well kept, but it wasn't inaccessible. And the people were so friendly and they communicated really well. They understood tourism was a huge part of their economy, and so they made it their business to be able to communicate and to be friendly and show people around. And it was just, we learned so much through them.

Drew (00:04:51):
How did you handle language? Through the whole situation. I mean, from one country to the next, I guess when you're on a cruise, you're, you're just going to very touristy areas. So English is probably prevalent. Most places that you go.

Samuel (00:05:04):
English is, my first language was Dutch, so a lot of the Germanic languages. Okay, I've got covered. You can understand them, maybe not speak them. And then in school, we had to learn French from the third and 10th grade in Canada where I grew up. So that helps with French and of course, Spanish, Italian. And

Jessica (00:05:26):
There really is truth in there being families of language, the Germanic and the romance languages. And so I speak a bit of Spanish, and with that knowledge, I didn't have any trouble really navigating through Italy

Samuel (00:05:36):
Either. So she was able to help someone out in Venice. They need a little help. And she used simple Spanish to communicate to the Italian lady.

Jessica (00:05:46):
And I actually also spoke with our taxi driver in

Samuel (00:05:51):
The Uber guy in Milan or

Jessica (00:05:52):
Milan. Thank you. Between my Spanish and his Italian, we were able to converse just fine, and I got his recommendation for a restaurant. Oh, nice.

Drew (00:06:01):
That's awesome. Yeah. Well, I mean, the thing with me is I'm about to head down to a Cancun, and when I go down there, I'm going to be riding the ADO bus, so I'm going to be out in the middle of nowhere, and who knows? And I know French, but my Spanish is, I know just a little, I'm going to try to refresh as much as I can, but knowing that you can kind of at least see it's a Latin language.

Jessica (00:06:28):
So there similarities.

Drew (00:06:29):
Yeah. Yeah. My problem was I took Spanish in college for one year after taking years of French, and it just ruined my French. Oh, no. Because I kept thinking, oh, wait, is that the French pronunciation or is that the Spanish pronunciation? I can't remember. But

Jessica (00:06:45):
They forgive you as long as you try, right? I mean, it's why it's such a good tip to everywhere you go. Yeah. Say, learn something. Learn the key words in that language.

Drew (00:06:54):
So this wasn't the trip where you went to Romania or was it

Jessica (00:06:59):
No. So the trip to Romania was actually one of my first trips abroad before I met Sam. And you and I had talked about this story beforehand. So I traveled with a group there, and we all learned certain words and phrases in Romanian, and we actually learned kind of a little bit of a presentation about who we were in Romanian. None of us fully understood what we were saying. All we knew was that this is the translated version that we had to learn to repeat. And apparently I picked up the local accent. Well, uhoh that because I also looked a bit Romanian. I got mistaken for a local more than once. I had this old lady come and she started sharing what I could only assume was her life story. And even though I kept telling her new day, I don't speak Romanian. I'm not Romanian. Yeah, she did not believe me.

Drew (00:07:53):
You did too good. Yeah. I mean, it's funny because learning French for me, and then learning Spanish, my mouth tends to work better. With French. I can roll a French R, but I can't roll a Spanish R because the Spanish R comes from the back of the throat, whereas the French R kind of rolls off the front of the tongue. So for me to be able to speak, well, that's why I like French better than Spanish from a learning standpoint is because I feel like I could probably be closer to natural in that. But I had a friend of mine, because I used to travel up to Quebec quite a bit. And when I would go up, the first time I went, I was just petrified. I'm thinking, I got my high school French, I don't know how I'm going to do on this trip.

(00:08:37):
And so it was kind of tension the whole time. And I kept thinking of just simple phrases that I could say. The second time that I went, my accent was not good, but I was getting the words out and people understood what I was saying. But they were going straight into English as soon as I would say Ur. And the third time I went, I had a friend of mine before I went who he was expert at Spanish, and he had actually studied six dialects of Spanish. And he told me before I went, he said, get yourself some music CDs of music artists from the area that you're going to, and whether you can, you know what they're singing or not, just mimic them and you'll pick the style of their accent up. And I did that, and it was so cool because the next time I went back to Quebec, I had the words. I also had enough of the dialect that people would just keep talking to me in French. And I said, ah, I've arrived

Jessica (00:09:40):
Doing. That's awesome.

Samuel (00:09:42):
It's a great tip. Doing a little Celine Dion there.

Drew (00:09:43):
Yeah, there you go. I know, and it's funny because what Quebec and France, their dialects are completely different. And if you use your Quebec dialect in France, they're probably going to look at you, what is wrong with you? So yeah, it's definitely fun to pick up the language. So besides, do you remember any of your Romanian, or is it kind of loaded up?

Jessica (00:10:11):
Oh, I can just tell you that pama, Jessica. My name is Jessica. Oh, okay. I knew a whole lot more back then, but it's been a while.

Drew (00:10:18):
Yeah, easy to refresh though.

Jessica (00:10:21):
Absolutely.

Drew (00:10:21):
If you were going to go back. Yeah, I had trouble in Czech Republic because the language is so different and I couldn't relate it to anything. And the whole time I was there, I couldn't remember the difference between, thank you and please. And so I kept saying the wrong one. So it helps you appreciate when people come to your country and they can't speak your language very well, for sure. Yes. Most

Samuel (00:10:46):
People are forgiving though when you give it a try.

Drew (00:10:48):
Yeah. So how many languages do you have, Sam?

Samuel (00:10:52):
Oh, oh, well, officially just two, I would say. Okay. I know my French, and I've dabbled a bit with Arabic, which is kind of fun, but Okay.

Jessica (00:11:03):
Yeah, you can get around in quite a few languages, I feel like. Yeah, I mean, whenever we've traveled, I've always been amazed at how much he can understand. I think Greece was the only place where, yeah, you stumbled a bit.

Samuel (00:11:13):
Yeah.

Drew (00:11:14):
Well, in Holland, it wasn't Holland, it was Belgium where I had the hardest time because I'm thinking, what language should I be speaking? Because there's a little Dutch, there's a little German, there's a little French. It's like

Samuel (00:11:26):
Switzerland's messed up like that too, I guess in three languages there.

Drew (00:11:30):
So I guess it's a matter of what part of the country you're in, and just understanding probably the one that's closer. I know that when I went into Switzerland from Italy, it seemed like Italy was correct. Italian was still pretty prevalent around that

Jessica (00:11:46):
Area. I think the biggest thing though that I try to remind people is not to be intimidated. Don't worry about having the right accent or speaking the main language, just making an effort. People aren't expecting you to be a local, but just seeing that you've made an effort can really go a long way.

Drew (00:12:03):
Absolutely. Absolutely. So we were, Samuel and I were passing some notes the other day, and you mentioned actually about your trip to northern Italy. So what parts of Italy have you been to and what's, what are your favorite parts?

Samuel (00:12:20):
Yeah. Earlier we were talking about Monaco. There was a trip we did in 2011, and that was before Jessica, but some of my family, we flew to Amsterdam and then right away hopped in the car and drove five hours to Paris. But on that road trip, we hit up a couple areas near Genoa. Portofino really sticks out. It's kind of a small town version of Monaco. Funny enough, month or two after I went there, it was featured in Connie Nast Traveler Magazine as being an awesome place to go to. And then Tuscany, if you want to do Chiqui or any of that area, it just really hits up as a real, just really neat place to

Drew (00:13:05):
Me. Have you been down to Santorini?

Samuel (00:13:09):
Not in that town itself. Okay.

Drew (00:13:11):
Yeah,

Jessica (00:13:11):
That's definitely still on our bucket list. I

Samuel (00:13:12):
See.

Drew (00:13:13):
I feel like I'm the only human being who's never been there.

Jessica (00:13:16):
No, you're not. Because,

Drew (00:13:18):
Because every time I look at Instagram, I see people posting pictures from there, and I go, it's

Jessica (00:13:22):
Gorgeous.

Drew (00:13:23):
Yeah. Yeah. It's bucket list. But my bucket list is so insane right now. I don't know where to start. I'm just picking them off here or there, wherever I can get it.

Jessica (00:13:33):
The more you explore, the more you realize there's a lot still to be explored.

Samuel (00:13:37):
Yeah. I think that's how it happens. Dubai was on my bucket list way at the bottom because it just, oh, logistically it's a little different. And then some friends moved there and we stayed there for three weeks. All of a sudden it came to the top of the list.

Drew (00:13:54):
So how is it different planning trips for other people versus planning your own trips?

Samuel (00:14:01):
You have to consider a lot more about the other person. I know what my budget is. I know what my fear factor, I guess, or lack thereof is. And you have to kind of interview or know the person well to understand what they can do. But generally, you try to find out what it is that their passion might be and then try to tailor something for them. So in some of the examples, we've had people wanting to go to, let's say Ireland. They do not like the big bus tours, just too many people, and you got 15 minutes here and 20 minutes there, and then we're hauling off again. So I heard that and I said, well, for about the price of the bus store, if four of you go, we can do it in a Mercedes sprinter and you can do it on your own. And so we put together a quote and everything like that, considering the custom part, and they had the driver for themselves.

Drew (00:15:06):
Then the question, do you want to drive on the left hand side of the road? Yeah. How did that work for?

Samuel (00:15:14):
Well, I mean, that's where the chauffeur came in, right? Oh,

Drew (00:15:16):
Okay.

Samuel (00:15:17):
Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. So the whole, yeah, sorry, I didn't mention that in detail, but the chauffeur came with the vehicle. Oh, okay. And they took them everywhere and they would arrange the entrance passes and admissions and such in advance, so they wouldn't have to wait in line for that.

Drew (00:15:33):
So the, would the chauffer also be giving them the history of the area and all those things you get when you're on a tour bus?

Samuel (00:15:39):
Yeah, they did. That depends from driver to driver. That's why if you look at the big buses, usually you have a tour guide and the driver, so you might not have that on the smaller ones, but you get that more intimate time when you're at the place to make up for it.

Drew (00:15:58):
Yeah. This is, see, this is all new to me because again, I don't, between not having somebody else plan out my trips, I just do what I know how to do. And so my travel gets limited to what my scope is, and I think of those tour buses and I go, I don't want to go on a tour bus. I don't want to be trapped with all those different people, but I see the benefit of it because I've been on ghost tours and that sort of thing, and you get such a rich experience from a local who's telling you all of this stuff that I'd have to just research myself.

Jessica (00:16:33):
For some people, it's right in their comfort zone. They want to be with other people. They want the safety of the group. They want the routine of a tour guide and a driver who know precisely what they're doing down to the minute everything's like clockwork. And that's wonderful that as long as they're traveling and they're broadening their horizons,

Drew (00:16:52):
When I think of bespoke, I think of tailoring of clothes and I know semantics, we play with them and things get adopted into new language along the way. And so when we're talking about bespoke travel versus traditional travel agents, what would you say is the difference?

Jessica (00:17:14):
So for me, the difference is if you just think about that experience, like you said, of clothes, a bespoke tailor on Seville Row is going to take your measurements. It's going to ask what you like. You might get to pick the fabric, tell them what the event is for. They're going to have a lot of time and conversation with you finding out your objectives. It's very different from you walking into a department store and they simply have racks of suits there for you. And you get to choose one of the suits that you like. And well, if you're feeling fancy, you might take it to a local tailor and have them make a few alterations. That's the difference between a bespoke travel agent and a regular big box, as we call them, travel agent. So if I walk into a traditional brick and mortar travel agency and tell them that I want a vacation package, they have packages already put together that they're going to show me and ask me to pick from, they may do something more custom if I press, but that's not their main lane.

(00:18:17):
A bespoke travel agent isn't going to start showing you packages right away. They're going to start talking with you right away, figure out what it is you want to do. And as Sam mentioned, what the budget is, what are your preferences, your comfort levels. So for us, we find that it varies from client to client. Some people want to be very hands-on, they want to do a lot of the research themselves, and that's great. We're there as their partners then to help them plan this and to have fun with that. Some people don't really know what they want and they want us to do the research and the planning. They just know they don't want the big box. And that's a lot of fun for us too. We get to sit down and we really have a lot of conversations with them. We put together some suggestions and present it to them and say, what do you think about this? Here are some options. We could kind of tweak it this way. How do you feel about that? And it's a lot of fun to see their eyes light up and say, this is exactly what I would've wanted, but I would've never found these resources.

Drew (00:19:15):
So how long does a consultation period tend to last? Is it like a series of meetings, or do you get a lot out of your initial meeting and then it's just kind of phone calls back and forth or emails?

Samuel (00:19:26):
It depends a lot on how extensive it is. I would say probably at the moment, our own trips are the most extensive, and we like to use those as a showcase. Look, here's possible. If you even do a portion of this, you're going to have a good time. And some people, they just cannot get past the fact. They think, okay, we're going to fly to a particular city and then that's it. They don't understand that they can then take the train somewhere and then fly back from that other city. Maybe that's simple and we enlighten them on that. Or it might be more complex itineraries that just require a lot of dealing with, and these people are busy. They have other things and they know what they want, but they don't want to be stuck with the mundane part of having to book all those individual pieces.

Jessica (00:20:19):
So as far as consultation time, we've had clients where we sit down for an hour, an hour and a half with them, and we're done, we're booked. And we have other clients where over a period of several weeks we have one long conversation with them, and then we kind of touch base and text or emails or phone calls, whatever they prefer, and say, okay, here's what we're finding. Would you like to have more feedback on this?

Drew (00:20:39):
Yeah. Do they need a lot of lead time or mean, can you plan one of these trips in a couple of weeks and they're ready to go?

Jessica (00:20:48):
Oh yeah, we can absolutely do that.

Drew (00:20:50):
Okay. Yeah, it may depend on, it may cause some things to not be able to happen, or depending on holidays and things like that, that may correct. No.

Jessica (00:21:00):
Right. Well, there may be price differences where you say, okay, we're not going to be able to wait for a certain sale that we think might come up in a month or two. But other than that, I mean, there's no reason why we can't nail things down quickly.

Drew (00:21:13):
So what's the most complex trip you've probably done for somebody up to this point?

Samuel (00:21:20):
Good question.

Jessica (00:21:23):
Well, I think, like you said, the most complex trips that we've done have been the ones for ourselves simply because we had the time and probably the least fear factor, as you call it,

Samuel (00:21:34):
Where I'm hesitating a little bit is that exactly what she did. Our trips have been most complex. So a lot of the stuff you do for other clients then doesn't seem so complex. Yeah. So I'm having to think a little bit.

(00:21:49):
Yeah, I mean, the school groups I think are a good example of where you get, yes, the more complex, because youve got 20 or 30 people going on a trip, and you may have to make sure that all of the preferences, there may be some disabled people, there may be children. All of those things have to be factored in, and you have to plan it all and deliver all the documents and everything to the tour guide and make sure all of that comes into place. The museums they want to go to are open on the days that they can go, and they have enough metro tickets to go to all the places in the city or whatever it may be. So yeah, we, we've done quite extensive ones, but most of 'em are for ourselves.

Drew (00:22:37):
When you're doing the school group, have you ever have situations where the tour guides, do they need to get back in touch with you during the trip to help with logistics along the way? Or do you guys usually have it planned out to the tee and there?

Samuel (00:22:54):
Yeah, we, we've been very blessed that everything's been working quite well. We plan it all ahead and then they don't have to communicate, take

Jessica (00:23:02):
A lot of planning, goes into it beforehand to make sure it runs smoothly, and we stay in touch with them through the trip. They let us know things are going well, et cetera, and we're available should they need us. That's half the point of having a travel agent

Samuel (00:23:14):
And there's buffers and such. So if they need to spend a little bit more because of a mistake somewhere, in one case, this person had left their bag somewhere and they had to go and find it. So that meant someone had to stand and wait for them while everybody else was rushing to the airport. So that required a little bit of rearranging. But the tour guide, what we try to do as well is find the right people who understand. So the Japan trip was done with someone who had been to Japan before and speaks Japanese, but is from here so that the people don't feel like they don't understand what they're talking about. And then the Germany trip last year, same thing. She's a German teacher based out of Virginia, and that helps a lot with everybody.

Drew (00:24:06):
So what kinds of schools are you? I mean, are these public schools that you're doing trips for or are you doing more like the private schools?

Samuel (00:24:15):
Yeah, so far it's been private. Okay. Not to say that you can't do it with public schools, we were able to get really good deals like the trip that we've planned for London for this year. If you wanted to do it yourself, the way we're doing it probably is going to cost you about $5,000 per person. But because of the networks that we have, we're able to drop it to about $3,500 per person. But still, 3,500 for a lot of people is totally out of their price range. But what we're able to do is hit up all the things that they need, and because of the network that we have, we're able to offer them a big discount. That can be through group negotiations with the hotels or with the airlines that we work with.

Drew (00:25:07):
And you have agreements with all of these, because I was going to say, you're, you're not going to hostels. You have actual regular hotels. That

Samuel (00:25:14):
Was the request in this case with the chip, the Japanese trip, we actually rented apartments so that they could get the true authentic Japanese lifestyle. They cooked in their apartments and did laundry and everything. But the German and the London trip, the preference of that group is more of a hotel. So we have one with a full British breakfast every morning and a three course dinner at night, and they're in a great place connected to the tube.

Drew (00:25:46):
Yeah. Yeah.

(00:25:48):
Easy access. Yeah. That's what I loved about London. I picked a perfect hotel to be in because I was right next to, and now I forget the name of the stop. There were actually two stops with two different train lines that were going by, but there's the one that circles all the way around London that The circle line? The circle line, yes. Yeah, that's actually named. Yeah, absolutely. I lived off the circle line at least the first day I was on and off and on and off of that. It was so convenient to get around. Yeah. Yes. I had lots of places. I had 80 pinpoints on my Google Maps, places to go in two and a half days. So yeah, it, yeah, wasn't awesome for that. I didn't get inside anything. I just took pictures outside and moved to the next place. But I saw a lot. I saw a lot. Nice. Some of the other kinds of trips that you do besides school trips, so have you planned out weddings for people and honeymoons to follow? Is that something that you guys do also?

Samuel (00:26:45):
Yeah, honeymoons we've done, we've tried to do some weddings, but a lot of the people we've been able to talk with kind of wanted to do a lot of that themselves. And they weren't destination weddings where they go on a cruise or go to a resort. So it was a little different.

Jessica (00:27:07):
But so providing support for more local weddings as in just getting hotel blocks, helping with local entertainment arrangements and things like that. We can do that. So we're not a huge agency and don't ever want to be or plan to be, I guess I should say. But that's kind of the thing with the bespoke travel agency, you want to have that flexibility. Word of mouth is our best marketing and advertising, so we're not out there trying to grab all these different types of gigs, you should say. Yeah. But yeah, other types of trips that we've coordinated, we do a lot with people who have places they want to go but aren't really sure the best way to get there, aren't sure they're going to get the best price. They do want to make sure maybe they have insurance to go along with it, et cetera. That's something that we can help with. We also work with couples or small groups, so two or three couples at a time who want to go on a small group vacation. Again, don't really want to just go to Florida and stay in a big hotel and go to Disney World. They like something a little bit more along the lines of their tastes and within their budget, et cetera. So that's really where our specialties are.

Samuel (00:28:22):
We were able to do a, two couples wanted to go to a particular resort in Central America, and they'd had seen prices from one of the big tour companies and all inclusive hotel flight, everything in one package. And they asked us and we said, Hey, did you know that if your guys are okay living in the same house together, you're going to have your own bedrooms, would you look at a villa? So we were able to price a villa together where three times a day someone came and cooked for them and it was stocked with all the drinks they wanted. And then there was a bus or some service that took regularly came by to take them into town, and they had their own private pool and everything, and the price was the same. So when that happens and you don't want to be part of the mega resort, then that's the type of stuff that we really like helping out with. There's a time and a place, I mean, we do mega resorts, we do big cruise lines ourselves, because you kind of have to taste everything. And there's a time and a place for all of that. Like fam reunions on a big carnival cruise line ship is totally fine. If you want to see Alaska from the sea and you have a limited budget, we'll recommend Holland America for you. But there's so many other options too. And that's, I think the big benefit of the travel agent side.

Drew (00:29:46):
Well talk about the cruise side of things because when I noticed that you had done Caribbean cruises and Alaskan cruises in terms of using a travel agent to do that, rather than, I've had the road Carnival cruise lines down to The Bahamas, and then they give you this big long list of things you can do and they're going to cost you this much extra and all. So I can book that through on their website and all of the excursions that I want to do. Where is the advantage of doing it through you guys rather than doing it through their site?

Samuel (00:30:19):
A lot of times the support afterwards enduring is a benefit. So sometimes people forget things or need questions answered. It's much easier to text or call or email someone like us rather than sit on hold and wait for the right people to talk with. And a lot of times the people in the call center have not done it. And I think that's the big key. So they're reading a script on what to do, whereas if you need to go to a particular place, all of the places we've been to, I can help you just because I can go through my memory and say, yeah, go to this hallway, turn, do this. And I think that's a big benefit. And still the majority of cruises are booked through travel agents, somewhere between 60 and 80% is the stat. The cruise lines really prefer that because it's a support we give makes it easier for them as well. And it,

Jessica (00:31:17):
It's something that people who have traveled a lot like us tend to forget, but when you're just getting into traveling or into a new type of traveling like cruises, even just that process of researching the cruise and going through that list of how to prepare or what the options are can be so overwhelming. There's so many choices. It's one of the things cruises are good at is having choices for everybody, which is wonderful once you get comfortable with that. But until then, it's a fire hose of information that you don't know how to deal with. And so a travel agent is there to help you sort through that and calm your fears, answer your questions, help you pick just the right option for you, and then help you sort through as the days go by. Are there any add-ons that I want? Are my payments made? Do I have insurance when I get down to the dock and they ask for a passport if needed? Depending on where I'm going, they ask for my documentation. Oh no, I've forgotten it. No problem. I'm going to call my travel agent. They're going to send you a copy right now. Okay.

Drew (00:32:17):
Yeah, that makes a big

Jessica (00:32:18):
Difference. Yeah, all of that goes on. So I think that's really,

Samuel (00:32:23):
Yeah, we had a co client on their honeymoon. They got married, they're driving, and all of a sudden they get a phone call, they'd forgotten some documents, and the resort didn't have some information to help them either. So he makes a phone call to me, and that was in the days of faxing, two, three minutes later, that document is there and the hotel said, oh yeah, we know about this.

Speaker 4 (00:32:47):
Think of a honeymoon.

Drew (00:32:49):
Yeah. That's tough for me because as a solo traveler, I mean, if I don't have it with me, if I haven't put it somewhere, and so I take massive amounts of notes before I leave thinking, okay, make a bullet list of stuff that you need to remember to walk out the door with, check all that stuff off. I mean, because otherwise, well, and the other thing is I'm planning out a trip to Scotland, and in doing that trip,

(00:33:17):
I'm going through a, I actually was not sure how to handle things such as, I need to take a car ferry to get to Isla, the island of Isla. And so I'm going, well, it's going to be on Easter and I don't know what I'm supposed to, is it running at Easter? Right. I need to buy my stuff ahead of time for it. I mean, there's a lot of logistics you have to do, and you're sort of dependent on either asking the hotel you're staying at or, and you don't know who you're talking to there and whether they got the right information or not, and all of that sort of stuff. So I could definitely see where that,

Samuel (00:33:56):
Yeah, and a lot of that, for instance, are you allowed taking your rental car on a ferry or if you rent your car in Germany or Switzerland and it happens to be a Mercedes, are you allowed driving it into Italy? No. Those are all kinds of restrictions that a lot of people don't know because it's not necessarily published. Yeah, it's deep in the fine print. But often, for instance, we wanted to go to my brother and I that is wanted to go to Prague, and that's restricted on a rental car from, I learned colander,

Drew (00:34:26):
Germany. I learned that same lesson, but all

Samuel (00:34:29):
It took was a request in the notes, we want to do this, and that was it, huh? No extra fees, no other issues. They just wanted to know in it head.

Drew (00:34:39):
So you probably would've saved me some money when I went to Czech Republic because that I got a rental car in Czech Republic, and then I wanted to drive to Dresden, Germany, and they said that you needed to get, I needed to get a visa for the car.

(00:34:56):
I mean, I can't question them. Right? Right. They're standing here in line and the next person's right behind me. So they've got me kind of in a spot where I can't go research it and figure it all out. The other thing I learned when I did my first drive, I just researched to death, and this is one of those things where you guys have the experience and I have to spend hours and hours trying to figure this all out on my own. And the vignettes, which for people that don't know, when you're traveling over in Europe, there are certain countries where you have to have a sticker on your car that is valid before you drive into the country, not as soon as you get in the country. So I learned driving into Austria that I needed to spend 14 euro in at a gas station outside of Austria and purchased that before I drove in because when you drive in, I actually saw police at the border who had pulled people over and I was told that you can pay up to a $2,000 fine, and they will ask for your credit card.

Samuel (00:36:02):
They don't play.

Drew (00:36:03):
Yeah. So learning that and Switzerland was the same thing. You have to basically pay your road tax on whatever rental car you drive in for the entire year.

Samuel (00:36:12):
Yeah, they do their tolls a little different. Like France and Italy, you pay tolls kind of like you're what you're used to easy pass type on the east coast or so of the us. But Switzerland has this sticker that's valid for the whole year, and

Drew (00:36:27):
I was there for one day and I had to pay for a whole year's worth of, yeah,

Samuel (00:36:31):
We pawned that sticker off to someone else.

Drew (00:36:34):
Did you really? Yeah,

Samuel (00:36:35):
After we were able to do that. Yeah. So they took benefit of

Drew (00:36:38):
It. So it's not tied to your license plate number or anything?

Samuel (00:36:41):
No, it was to the, yeah, it's just a little sticker you put in the vehicle and then they were able to use it

Drew (00:36:46):
After. I should have thought of that. Oh man. At least give it to somebody and say, Hey, here's use this. I spent money on it. Holy cow. So in terms of doing your planning out of trips, then you just kind of get a feel from the person as to whether they want one of those rapid fire trips I like to take or whether they want to just settle

Samuel (00:37:09):
In

Drew (00:37:09):
Exactly and relax. Well, let's talk a little bit about, again, why a travel agent. And I know we've answered some of those questions along the way, and some of them are very apparent in terms of your relationships with vendors. Sometimes when I think of a travel agent, I think, well, travel agent's only going to steer me towards this particular company or that particular company because they get perks from that company or commissions. Is that, do you feel limited by that? Is that something that you No,

Samuel (00:37:45):
No. There are some vendors that would give you some incentives, but we really kind of look at it on a bigger scale. What are those incentives also translate to our clients. So for instance, while we have a good partnership with Marriott, that isn't necessarily because Marriott gives us extra money for sending you that way, but it's just we know consistently their customer service is good. And we also deal with on the school trips with the core hotels in Europe, they have proven themselves to be able to handle what we need. And that's one thing that you can't gamble some of the smaller vendors, as much as we'd love sometimes to use them, if you're sending 30 kids over a certain place, you have to count on certain baseline.

Jessica (00:38:36):
Part of the reality of being a smaller bespoke agency, a repeat business is a huge part of our income. So even if we weren't altruistically wanting our customers to have a good time, it is in our interest just business wise to make sure that our customers have the best experience. Because we're not a huge big box travel agency. We are not going to be counting on the next new family walking in, booking their Disney cruises with us. So even somebody who may doubt that we're really just genuinely wanting them to have a good time, we can say no truly, even if it weren't for that, yeah, it makes sense for us to want you to have the best amount of the best experiences you can. So we're not going to just send you to a vendor that's going to give us a dime more now, but not give you the time of your life.

Drew (00:39:29):
So I guess the other thing that me going online and always looking for the best price I can find on this and the rest, the price is one option. But in working with a travel agent, do you also tend to be able to get people upgrades and that sort of thing that maybe we wouldn't know about?

Samuel (00:39:46):
Air airlines have changed that a lot. I mean, that's usually where most people are looking for upgrades. I presume that's what you're getting at.

Drew (00:39:52):
Or hotels maybe better

Samuel (00:39:54):
Rooms. They tend to go more after the frequent flyers right now, because there are so many travelers, not empty space. Every flight is pretty much full. A lot of hotels are booked. So where we're able to look at it is on some trips we have access to, I don't know exactly how to phrase it in a general term, but there's groups out there who will book large amounts of space in hotels and airlines, and then we can take one or two or 10 seats or whatever and get a discount that you can't get. But we also, I mean a lot of people look at how to save money. Some of that's just done in knowing how to travel. I've had people who will complain about a $5 difference in fair, but by saving that $5, they spend nine extra hours around in airports. In the end, they're not saving anything. So what we like to say is we can kind of steer you towards itineraries that are better, and we know certain ways where you can save money because that does matter and because you can spend that on something else, part of your trip.

Jessica (00:41:13):
But because we're in touch with these companies and industries on a more regular basis, we do get wind of their sales and promotions more frequently as well. So no travel agent is going to promise that they'll always be aware right away of the best sale because we're not God. Right? But we are far more likely know right offhand that, Hey, this company is having a good sale over here, or Hey, this hotel is actually running a promotion right now where you can get upgrade to two more levels if you book within this date range. So

Drew (00:41:48):
Is it better for somebody to approach you and say, here's my dream vacation and I'd like to take it in the next year or so. Can you gauge out when the best time for me to go is or keep watching the fares and everything and until you get a deal that kind of fits what I'm looking for,

Samuel (00:42:09):
And they're knowing where you're going. Someone recently asked us about a trip to Paris or France in general and wondering when the best time is due. They said, we have the whole year, tell us when. So from my own experience, the end of May is perfect because the weather is pretty decent in Paris. You don't have to get these big coats, but the tourist season hasn't started yet, so it took us 15 minutes to get into the Eiffel Tower.

Jessica (00:42:38):
So the lines are less, the prices haven't skyrocketed yet for tourist season.

Samuel (00:42:42):
Yeah. And one big benefit as well is that if you're doing stuff online, you're looking at prices and hoping that you've got the best one. I just recently did for two people who are traveling to Europe this week actually is I just booked a number of different seats and we can kind of put 'em out there and they can compare what fits best and then we just cancel the ones they don't want. And that's a lot harder for you to do. Yeah, we get a lot more flexibility where we can have cabins on cruise ships. I've booked four or five on different cruises or different airlines and just we can then sit down, talk about it, and then pick the one that works rather than Here's what we found and then find out that by the time you're ready to buy it. Oh, sold out. It's now a hundred bucks more.

Drew (00:43:35):
Yeah. In, because you mentioned travel insurance before, do you try to recommend that to everybody that travels, or is that just kind of a personal choice? Yeah, we

Samuel (00:43:48):
Always recommend it. Now, just to be honest, there are certain trips that we do where, yeah, as you call it, it's a $250 round trip plane ticket and the hotel's cancelable. What's the risk? But if you've got a 10 or $15,000 package and you're going out of the country, there's a lot of risks that you can run into. One particular story, we won't go into all the details, but they went to Africa and something happened with a car accident and they had to raise a quarter of a million dollars who to send a jet out to pick him up. And the hospital was like, oh, your back is hurt. Can we give you an aspirin for this? So with the insurance, that would've been no problem. There's like a half a million dollar evacuation policy built in, and you buy 'em for, depending on your age, it might have only cost you $150 to have that peace of mind.

Drew (00:44:57):
And so they cover more than just the price of your tickets and such. It does also cover health

Samuel (00:45:03):
As well. Yeah, trip, absolutely cancellation, which is before you leave on the trip interruption while you're traveling, baggage issues, delays, loss, any of that type of stuff, certain medical things, they'll cover it. So if you have a copay or some of this stuff, they might just cover the first $15,000 of a visit and you don't even have to go to Blue Cross or whoever it is when you come back home. Right? It's just done. It's covered.

Drew (00:45:33):
I think what I've learned in doing my own I, I've always tried to just get the best fare or the best hotel rate wherever I go. And so when I would do it, they'd give you the option of free cancellation or pay a little bit, pay a little bit more for free cancellation versus, and I always just risked it every time and said, oh, I'm going on this trip somehow I'm going to get through it. And it hasn't bit me yet, but I have this trip to Scotland that I'm doing. I said, okay, I got to do free cancellation on all of these because if something changes, if I start driving my rental car around on the left side of the road and it's just freaking me out and I can't stand it, I don't want to have all of these hotels along the way that I can't cancel.

Jessica (00:46:22):
Well, we have clients too who have, fortunately it doesn't happen very often, but we've had clients who, something happened with their family before they left on their trip and made it necessary for them to want to stay in the States and not take their trip, which would've been a huge bummer on top of the bummer of what was happening with their family, but to lose the money and the opportunity. But with insurance, at least that headache is not there to worry about.

Drew (00:46:51):
Right? Yeah. I, I'm going down with three trips. One is to Hawaii. The one to Hawaii, I probably won't insure. I mean, it's an inexpensive flight and if it happened, it would be a bummer to have it something go wrong on it. The one to Cancun, I'm thinking, I'm going out of the country. My health insurance isn't going to follow me down there. I might drink the water by mistake.

Jessica (00:47:18):
Insurance is a wise idea. Then

Drew (00:47:20):
That one and the one that when I'm going to Scotland for three months or three weeks, that's a much longer time and a lot more for things to come up. So yeah. Yeah. Makes a big difference. How do you end up then mean? Do people pay you via credit card or cash or how does that usually tend to work?

Samuel (00:47:43):
The preference is credit cards, both from an industry standpoint, they're try to get around theft and fraud and all that type of stuff. And then also these people who money launder. So that is a traditional money laundering way. These overpriced trips with cash and the money gets transferred. So they prefer credit cards. The nice thing is the vendors typically will bill those. So if you're doing a cruise, it will show the cruise line on there. So it's a peace of mind as well. And if there's issues, you don't want to think of this way, but if the travel agency went under right after you've booked, all the monies are already paid to the vendors and you're good.

Drew (00:48:28):
So they're not paying you, they are paying the vendors directly

Samuel (00:48:32):
In our booking systems. We enter the credit cards and then those are sent electronically through the booking systems of the vendor and they process them for us. Okay.

Drew (00:48:44):
So then that leads to the question of how does a travel agent make money?

Samuel (00:48:48):
Yeah, that's a good question. It depends on how bespoke you need things to be. Most of our clients will have enough travel where the vendors pay us. So hotels, cruise lines, various packages that we arrange, the vendor will pay us, and that's built into the price. So if you go online and you see that exact same price that we're going to bill you, someone at the cruise line is just getting that or the hotel or it's just pure profit for whatever the vendor is, it's a profit to run their call center. Now that money goes to us and then we can support you. We do have consultation fees in some cases where you're getting very specific, your itinerary's very detailed, and we have to do a bunch of work with the school trips. Some of that's built into the price that they're paying. Airlines don't pay commission, but that doesn't mean that we have to always bill you.

(00:49:56):
There's ways for us to still make our money. So in summary, the vendors take care of us. And for the most part, for the most part, what we'll sometimes do is if someone is to avoid kicking tires and someone wants to do a detailed consultation, we'll say, okay, put a $200 deposit down or something like that and you can put that towards your trip. But then at least there's some commitment because sometimes you have people who will go around and they will just ask all these questions with no intention to purchase that we can't help the people who are paying us.

Drew (00:50:33):
They want to feel out whether you actually are a direction to go or whether they should just try to do it themselves and see if they can beat your price.

Samuel (00:50:41):
We had one person do that. They talked with them for a couple hours and then found out that they were only trying to get info from us so they could book it themselves. Yeah. Unfortunately in those cases we have to, because of those cases, we have to be careful.

Drew (00:50:57):
Yeah. Well you like me, have a web company as well, and so I know that experience because you will have people that will talk your ear off and ask you every single question under the sun and then you don't see them again. Yeah. You're like, okay. But luckily it doesn't happen that often that Yeah, correct. That you worry too much about it. So is bespoke a industry term? If I were looking through the I'm, I'm going to go really old school, if I'm looking through the yellow Pages, me being the only person looking through the yellow Pages, if I'm doing a hunt through Google, what is going to clue me into the difference between the two?

Samuel (00:51:41):
Yeah, so it is more of a British term, but we kind of took it from there because it is, the higher end places tend to use that. Really the distinguishing part is it really comes down to custom, but custom often is like, I want pickles or not pickles. Right? That's a custom burger. Well, I mean that takes nothing but a button in the pos and the chef doing it. But for us, we go a little further and that's why we didn't just want to say we do custom tours. We do ones that really totally fit your needs. We're not taking a catalog and saying, well, would you like to sit at the front of the bus or the back? Do you want a ocean view or not? It's not any of that. It's like, really tell us what do you want and we'll make the whole trip happen.

Jessica (00:52:32):
Oh, I was going to say, I mean, to your question about how would you find a bespoke travel agent in the Yellow Pages, there's not really one way where there's no such thing as denominations in travel agencies or where we might say, oh, this one's Baptist and that's Presbyterian, right. Or whatever. But yeah, making a few calls, hearing how they present themselves and what they're quick to offer you. That will tell you a lot.

Drew (00:52:59):
I guess it's going to depend on your trip too, because if you're just saying, I want to plan a trip to Disney World, you're not really going to be able to maybe figure that out from a phone call. How would you approach that? You would say, I want to go to Disney World, but I want to have this and this and this and this, and be a little bit more specific about it and see how they answer you on

Samuel (00:53:20):
Yeah, it's a really hard one because it totally depends on the people, but I could imagine some of them going this way. Yeah, I want to go to Disney. And they'll say, oh, great, here's our brochure. We have this package and that package. Whereas we are like to, and are supposed to ask a little bit more about what your intentions are and then figure out where to put you because you'll need a hotel. You might need transportation, you might want to know as well that you can transfer from Disney over to the port and do a Disney cruise or another cruise for the other three days of your vacation. Little things like that, you kind of try to field for you.

Jessica (00:54:03):
And in this new era too, where brick and mortar isn't necessary, a travel agent doesn't have to be in your local city to work with you. So I mean, a way on Voyage can work with customers and we have worked with clients all over the country. So it's really a matter of what you're comfortable with and what you find.

Drew (00:54:23):
Well, and I guess a strategy would be, you know, try a travel agent out and if your experience is kind of eh, then you go find another travel agent until you, another one hit the one that you click with. It's almost like absolutely, with starting a business, trying to find an accountant and trying to find a lawyer to work with or a

Samuel (00:54:44):
Doctor.

Drew (00:54:45):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because there is a trust, they do hold your vacation in their hands. Correct. So you want to make sure that that things are going well. So in terms of your travel and where you guys are now that you have, you've got one and you've got one on the way. So yes. How does this change your travels? Does this mean you're putting travel on hold for a little while? Not

Jessica (00:55:11):
At all. So traveling with kids is a different experience than traveling on your own for sure. But it's not as scary as people would believe. So our firstborn has been on planes since he was three and a half months old. I think that's probably the first tip I would tell people is don't be afraid to start young. In fact, I encourage starting young while they're little and they can be comforted in their parents' arms. Start letting them be exposed to this great big world that we're in and start taking joy in those things instead of being overwhelmed by them and scared by them. And there are a lot of different ways that travel doesn't have to be more expensive with young ones either. Granted, as you start adding people and more people, yes, expenses do go up, but then you can start flexing options on your trips as well, which is where a travel agent comes in handy as well to help guide you through that. So for these first two years of our firstborns life, we've taken advantage of the free or relatively free infant in arms, airline tickets. So it has not cost us any more to fly with him than it did before. And he's never been a problem on the planes.

(00:56:33):
And now that we're going to have a second child and our son is going to outgrow the age limit on the free tickets, it is going to start costing a little bit more. But with loyalty points and things like that as well, it does make it a little bit easier to handle those

Drew (00:56:50):
Costs. Yeah. Well and bringing up the loyalty points and all that stuff, that's the other plus to you guys letting the client go through and purchase directly from the vendors because they can utilize all their points and all

Jessica (00:57:06):
Of that. Absolutely. When we are planning your travels for you, we're going to ask you if you have loyalty accounts with any of these vendors. If you do, we're going to ask for those numbers so we can make sure that you get the credit for those days or those bookings.

Samuel (00:57:19):
And more and more vendors are not giving the loyalty benefits if you're booking from discount websites. If it's not done through, sometimes our documentations will say through IATA sources, then nothing gets credited. And even if you're a Diamond member, you won't get any of the perks like free upgrades and stuff like that. So they're really hitting hard on that this year, whereas our channels are exempt from that.

Drew (00:57:48):
It's constantly changing. I guess the other analogy is as an accountant keeps up with all of the tax changes that are going on, correct. Your travel agent keeps up with all of the changes in how the airlines are working and all the regulations that Yes. And what you would need if you want to go long term, stay somewhere versus a short term stay and the rest. That's

Samuel (00:58:12):
Correct.

Drew (00:58:12):
Yeah. Okay. How do you learn all this stuff?

Samuel (00:58:16):
It's fun. Live it. Yes,

Jessica (00:58:18):
For sure. But even back on the kids thing too, we've learned things like restrictions on car seats and when you need a car seat, when don't when driving in Europe. So for transfer from the hotel to the airport, do we need to make sure our taxi somehow has a car seat or those are things that we've already researched and we know now. So when somebody else needs to know that they don't need to go do that research, we've got it for them. Yeah.

Drew (00:58:48):
And it's so easy to miss things too. I could have very easily miss the vignette thing and that would've cost me a lot my money. Yeah.

Samuel (00:58:55):
I'm

Jessica (00:58:56):
So glad you saw that.

Drew (00:58:58):
Or taking this ferry in Scotland. I had to go finally, I staying at an Airbnb, so I talked to the person at the Airbnb and tried to get as much information as I could and she said, you better reserve your fairy because if you don't, you may not be going. And then she's like, all those distilleries you want to go to, you better get reservations. Cause I'm going, well, if she didn't tell me that, I could have been knocking on doors. Very disappointing. Or sitting at the dock going, I can't get there. My hotel's there. What are we going to do for the next couple of days? Yeah, that's That's big time help. So yeah, you've helped me out to definitely get a whole different kind of a feel for where the travel agent fits into the equation. And I would imagine that for me it will be just determining from trip to trip where it makes more sense to have a buddy. Right, exactly. The buddy system. Yeah. Get me through this thing. So where can people find out more information about your company and what you guys do?

Samuel (01:00:08):
Yeah, a lot of people like the web. Just go to away on voyage.com, visit us there. We also have a Facebook page, fb.me/away on voyage or just search for us. And from there we have contact forms and phone numbers.

Drew (01:00:24):
Fantastic. Well thank you so much for being on the show today and giving us your time. You're

Samuel (01:00:29):
Welcome. Thank you for having us. It was our pleasure.

Drew (01:00:32):
And there in closes another week of Travel Fuels Life. And if you want more information on this episode, just head out to the show notes page of travel fuels life.com/podcasts and search down episode number 10. And there you're going to find a link to Jessica and Samuel's away on Voyage website. And if you enjoyed today's show, make sure you subscribe using your favorite podcast app and that way you won't miss an episode and jump on twitter.com/travel fuels life to see some of the cool places I've traveled to or to let me know what you think of the show. Love hearing the feedback. And until next time, have a great week. Safe travels and thanks for listening to Travel Fuels Life.

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