Vacation, use a travel agent or do it yourself?

[Merc]

My wife is our travel agent. She spends weeks on the Internet planning a trip. We were on a cruise in Alaska in 2022 and a Mediterranean cruise in 2023 and visited 7 cities in Italy and Greece, and this year, we’ll be doing a riverboat cruise in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. It’s all on the Internet. Cruising is great because the ship is your hotel and you get an itinerary of all the tours that are available.

[Phloating Phlasher]

I remember when they had the "new Tourist office, parking lot & cafe across "the street" from Stonehenge & you could wander inside the circles.
Then they discovered they'd paved over the outer ring of wood post holes to build it!
I'm the "little oik" on the left!
Stonhenge.jpg

[jon_norstog]

I've always just gone. Europe is EZ 'cause the trains go everywhere and there is plenty of food. I like Thailand because my wife's family is there and like to show us a good time. OZ is EZ 'cause everyone speaks English. Lately I have been taking a bicycle and carrying my stuff on that - sleep in campgrounds when I can, otherwise in the wild.

Traveling with my wife is another matter. She likes to have a plan and uses her smart phone to line up hotels or air B&Bs.

We never use a travel agent. Salisa will get travel insurance, but I don't bother with it when I'm on my own.

I'm always surprised at how nice people are, even to someone as iffy as me.

jn

[Mark in Ottawa]

We have travelled a lot since we retired, with my wife doing all the research and organizing. Mostly, though, she has worked with a travel agent since they can often get you the best prices and usually are familiar with your destination and the best located hotels for your interests and budget. That is particularly true if you are going someplace exotic such as Asia. Having said that, we previously had an agent book us to Iceland and then a Baltic cruise. Unfortunately, the company that booked the flights neglected to confirm the booking and everything fell apart. They then tried to blame us for not noticing that the air tickets had not been charged to our Visa card. Bottom line here is that I would use an agent but then check every single leg of the itinerary to confirm that it has been booked and makes sense. On a trip to Ireland we found that it was going to be impossible to get to the airport in time at the end of our bus tour. We informed the agent and she managed to change our arrangements. As mentioned by others, get a good travel agent. Check the internet or ask friends for references