Educated Consumer vs. Ignorant Cheapskate
I love educated consumers. I try to be one as well. And when one is spending a couple thousand dollars on a vacation, I do believe in getting the best possible deal out there. Thing is, I don’t believe in screwing anyone over to get it. Service is valuable, and sometimes people won’t realise that until it’s far too late.
There have been any number of discussions on the “travel agent vs. direct booking” topic, and I can usually read them without completely blowing up. I think that people should know the differences in the two, especially because there are many who are new to cruising or think that booking direct with the cruise line is always the best course of action, and it’s good to see how others will choose to express their preferences in that particular debate. Today, though, I saw something on a discussion board that made me really angry, largely because the ignorance of the statements made is not only insulting (basically calling all TAs liars) but it’s also dangerous to anyone who actually takes this person’s advice.
What this person said was this, “In my experience, a good TA should be able to beat the cruise line’s price by at least 10 percent. Don’t listen to all the protestations that they’re not permitted to discount or that they’re making so little that they can’t afford to discount.”
Let me first state that this person is wrong. Straight up incorrect. Both sentences contain ignorant, incorrect statements. That alone makes it dangerous to anyone who might listen to this person, and it also makes it a minefield for any agent who has to deal with either this person or someone who took this person’s statements as fact. The inherent sense of entitlement threaded through it only causes me to dislike this person further, but that’s a personal issue and one that I will likely become extremely cranky about in another venue. Here, though, let’s stick to the basic facts, shall we? I’m about to blow this person’s words away with actual facts.
A good TA should be able to beat the cruise line’s price by at least 10 percent.
This is, quite simply, not always the case. Granted, many times we can and we do discount for our clients, but there are a number of occasions when we cannot. Does this mean that you should resign yourself to paying brochure prices? Absolutely not! We have access to sales, possible special group pricing, and yes, some cruise lines do allow agencies to discount (in the form of taking a smaller commission in order for our clients to pay less). This person’s assertion that if we choose to follow the cruise lines’ rules set forth to agencies, we are then not “good” TAs is inflammatory, insulting, and again, wrong. There are a number of cruise lines who DO NOT allow agencies to discount under any circumstances. Their published fares are what they are, and that’s what the client pays no matter what avenue they choose for booking. However, your travel agent can offer other things, such as onboard credit, bottles of wine, specialty dining vouches, pre-paid gratuities and other things. These things will also take away from our commission, it’s true, but we’re happy to offer them to our clients as much as we can, depending on the base fare of the cruise. (Also, please keep in mind that if you’re getting a super low fare on an inside cabin for a 3-day Bahamas sailing, there simply may not be enough commission in the booking to offer more than $25 onboard credit for the cabin, if that. I’m not being cheap, I’m trying to do my part so that my agency doesn’t go under. Every sale is important, every client is important, but I won’t offer you so much in onboard credit that I end up losing money on the booking, and neither will any other “good” TA.)
Don’t listen to all the protestations that they’re not permitted to discount or that they’re making so little that they can’t afford to discount.
I’ll say this again, because it bears repeating. It’s not a “protestation”, it’s a fact of business. Certain cruise lines DO NOT ALLOW agencies to discount. DO NOT. At all. You get either the published individual cabin fare, or you get the group fare if the agency has group pricing on a particular sailing, but that’s all. Which is why we offer other amenities to our clients. Either way, we’re giving up commission so that you can get an even better value on your sailing. There are a lot of rules the cruise lines as agencies to follow (some cruise lines have more than others), but following them isn’t just a courtesy. Should we choose not to adhere to those rules, we can have our commission levels dropped significantly, or we will simply be barred from booking that line. The consequences are very real, and affect the agency on a serious level. So when we say, “I’m sorry, but that cruise line doesn’t allow discounting,” it’s not an excuse, a protestation, or us being “greedy” (another misconception about travel agents that sets my blood to boiling). It’s us protecting our business by following the rules the cruise line has set forth as a condition of our continuing to receive commissions and as a condition of being allowed to book that cruise line at all. This is a fact. Anyone who tells you differently is, quite simply, wrong.
If any agent tells you that there’s not enough commission in the booking to discount because they can’t afford to, it’s very likely the case. Listen, agents aren’t necessarily getting rich off of your cruise. Most of these people who are advocating using a certain website that allows agents to compete for your cruise business (the name of which I will not post here, as I do not wish to send them any more potential users) are making the type of bookings through that site that generally result in an average agency commission of a whopping $30. Thirty. Dollars. No, I’m not kidding. The third largest cruise seller in the UK went under this week, and it was likely due to the fact that they were discounting beyond what they should have done in order to undercut every other agency’s pricing, with no regard as to the fact that you can have all the volume in the world but if you’re not actually making a commission in at least the double digits from each booking, you’re not going to be able to stay open. However, the market has grown so entitled to huge discounts and massive amounts of amenities that there are a number of agencies in the US who will work those same undercutting moves. Some of those agencies have gone under, either legally and by advising their clients ahead of time, or suddenly just packing up, shutting off the phones, and stealing away into the night. Leaving their clients high and dry with unpaid cruises, none of the promised amenities, and a whole lot of uncertainty as to whether or not the cruise they thought was a done deal was even paid for properly.
An agency has to make a certain base amount for each cruise it sells. That amount is up to the agency to determine, but while no-one operates a travel agency with an eye to getting filthy stinking rich, they won’t open one as a philanthropic gesture either. It’s a business, and businesses need to make money. I’m sorry that some people would begrudge us the ability to do so, but if you want me to continue to be able to provide the service, you can’t expect that I’ll offer either amenities or discounts to the level that my agency makes nothing in exchange for performing that service. As it is, I work for one of the agencies out there that does not charge a support fee, booking fee, change fee, consultation fee, or any other type of fee that isn’t imposed by the actual cruise line. I had a potential client last year who decided to go with another agency because they offered him a fare that was $6 lower than the one I offered. That’s all well and good, I’m happy he went with them. Because that agency charges a $14.99 booking fee for every cabin. So in the end? He wound up paying more for his sailing. I guess he told ME!
Even though the poster that I’m quoting here didn’t bring this up, I thought I’d mention it just to stave off any future questions as well. If an agency tells you that they can, in fact, offer onboard credit with the fare you’re booking, but they can’t tell you the amount in an email or a printed quote, it’s not just a stupid ploy to get you to call them. It’s actually a rule that at least one line has imposed that basically says that any email we send out with quotes constitutes “printed advertising”, and as such, prohibits agencies from engaging in it. Should agencies ignore this edict, they can and will be sanctioned by the cruise line by having their commissions slashed significantly. Also, should your agent tell you that there are upper-end limits to the amount of onboard credit they can offer you, they are not lying to you. Each cruise line has its own guidelines for such things, and part of the service that agencies provide is knowing what all of those things are so that they’re able to offer you the best value, amenities, and service possible.
Here’s the deal: I have often directed my clients to certain message boards, because those boards can be a fantastic resource when one is searching for information. However, as with any place where large amounts of people gather (either physically or virtually), you have to learn how to differentiate between the people who actually know from whence they speak and those who simply talk a good game. I don’t take them with a grain of salt so much as I take them with Lot’s wife.
Educate yourselves. Do your research. Compare your fares and amenities, if that’s what you need to do. But educate yourself fully, don’t just arm yourself with a lot of stuff that sounds like it might benefit you. Learn the whole story. And remember that, in the end, this is not a Turkish market or a used car lot. Haggling might go over well there, but it doesn’t work so well here. When it comes to your vacation, do you really want cheap or do you want a value? Learning the difference between those two things might be the first and most important lesson for any consumer.