trajancavalous
Nov 3rd, 2009, 03:05 AM
I consider myself a pretty savvy traveler. We go on 4 or 5 vacations a year and I always try to get the best deals possible. I normally never have use for a travel agent as I find better deals on my own.
Recently we planned to visit Dubai. I wanted to make some extended stop overs on the way and explored a few routing options. I checked a lot of airline and travel sites. Seattle-Iceland-Amsterdam-Cairo-Dubai ($1200cdn pp taxes in) looked really good.
Looking at Flight Centre I saw flights with transfers in Beijing, a city we have wanted to visit for some time. Their site doesn't allow multi-stop inquiries so I phoned and visited them in person. With a week long stopover from Vancouver I got a best quote of $1315 (it's best to ask a few different Flight Centre agents).
Normally I hate dealing with these people because I know how they operate. A few friends of mine have worked there and they all tell the same story. It's a tough place to work, there is a lot of pressure to make $ and they do it in part by simply sizing up a customer and then asking for as much money as they think they can get. Set pricing exists for advertised deals (some of which can be good, some of which due to limited availability barely exist) and some other offers but that's it.
However in this case I could not find another source that had anywhere close to the same price. Even the airlines (Air China) site or agents were nowhere close. Flight Centre was the only place I could find this deal.
So I guess Flight Centre doesn't completely suck after all.
Recently we planned to visit Dubai. I wanted to make some extended stop overs on the way and explored a few routing options. I checked a lot of airline and travel sites. Seattle-Iceland-Amsterdam-Cairo-Dubai ($1200cdn pp taxes in) looked really good.
Looking at Flight Centre I saw flights with transfers in Beijing, a city we have wanted to visit for some time. Their site doesn't allow multi-stop inquiries so I phoned and visited them in person. With a week long stopover from Vancouver I got a best quote of $1315 (it's best to ask a few different Flight Centre agents).
Normally I hate dealing with these people because I know how they operate. A few friends of mine have worked there and they all tell the same story. It's a tough place to work, there is a lot of pressure to make $ and they do it in part by simply sizing up a customer and then asking for as much money as they think they can get. Set pricing exists for advertised deals (some of which can be good, some of which due to limited availability barely exist) and some other offers but that's it.
However in this case I could not find another source that had anywhere close to the same price. Even the airlines (Air China) site or agents were nowhere close. Flight Centre was the only place I could find this deal.
So I guess Flight Centre doesn't completely suck after all.