It's 7 a.m. and the flight you paid twice as much for as you did last year is not getting out of the Aspen airport because of a snowstorm that doesn't look like it's going to let up anytime soon. You have two tight connections and at this rate it doesn't look like you'll make it to your grandmother's surprise 90th birthday party tonight - if you get there at all.
Given the frustrations of travels these days, what's a consumer to do? The desk agents have 65 other angry passengers to deal with, and the airline's customer service number is hit or miss. If you booked your flight on Orbitz or Expedia, you may be on multiple airlines, which may have saved you a few bucks but will likely compound the rerouting headaches.
This is a scenario where a travel agent might have come in handy. Far from being a dying breed, as many might believe, travel agents have a newfound relevance in this era of complex travel, with all its security issues and yo-yo-ing prices driven by the latest fuel fluctuations. With access to an industry-specific database and experience dealing with convoluted and ever-changing fares, travel agents can often find the best price or most convenient routing where consumer Web sites fall short.
And in a place like Aspen, with its frequent weather challenges and a higher-than-average percentage of wealthy and/or well traveled clientele, the few travel agents who remain are generally busier than ever.
"Getting in and out of Aspen is an art, and that's why we're still in business here," said Diane Rutgers, a travel agent with Pyramid Travel, an affiliate of Andavo Travel.
Rutgers, who began her career with Pyramid 24 years ago and now works out of a home office in Woody Creek, noted that the only constant in the travel industry has been change, so travel agents have always had to adapt.
There was the deregulation of the airlines in 1984, which resulted in increased competition and price wars, and for some time, the glory years for travel agents who helped their customers deal with a rapidly changing travel world. Sept. 11 jarred the industry and precipitated a domino effect of changes, not the least of which was the disappearance of commissions from the airlines, in March 2002, after waning for a period of five years.
So now, said Rutgers and other industry insiders, fewer and fewer people become travel agents. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 85,580 travel agents in the U.S. in May 2007. Over the years, many smaller travel agencies merged or were bought out by larger ones. Local experts say there are only a handful of full-time travel agents in the Roaring Fork Valley.
So the remaining, mostly independent, travel agents had to figure out how to charge for their services. Travel agents in the valley typically charge a $30-$50 service fee for basic point-to-point airfare arrangements. The fee typically climbs with add-ons such as hotels, rental cars and other special services.
"It's what the person deems your time is worth," said Jim Reed, a 50-year travel agent who works part-time for Resort Travel, the wholly owned subsidiary of Stay Aspen Snowmass. "It's a service like anything else," and as with a doctor or a lawyer, Reed said, people are willing to pay what it's worth to them for that service.
In Aspen, he said, the typical client is someone who is well off and wants a certain level of service.
"There is that market out there, and the niche is somewhere between first class and private jet," said Reed, who is now based in Grand Junction and can work off his laptop and phone from anywhere.
A travel agent, for example, can monitor a client's travel and alert the passenger of any changes in his itinerary ahead of time, and more importantly, be proactive with changes the day of travel. So if you are flying into or out of Aspen and weather threatens to throw a wrench into your itinerary, your travel agent is just a phone call away to reroute your flight or rent a car for you.
"The value of a good travel agent is exponentially greater with the challenges we have here in the winter," said Reed. "Often I know better than they do when they're in the airplane."
Because of that service capability, local travel agents have been able to maintain their client base even as the industry swirled with changes over the years.
Ski.com President and CEO Harry Peisach said that the company's travel agency subsidiary, The Travel Agents, has weathered the changes well and maintained its strength, boasting 50 percent repeat business because of its expertise in the idiosyncrasies of ski country travel. The Travel Agents, with its three agents, services a clientele made up of about 80 percent locals and 20 percent second-home owners who naturally travel frequently.
But it's not just the rich who come and go from Aspen - a place with a relatively strong travel-hungry population. And although some clients are simply of the generation that is used to having someone else handle travel arrangements, "you'd be amazed at how many people use these types of services to travel in style," said Bill Tomcich, president of Stay Aspen Snowmass and a certified travel agent.
Tomcich, who oversees SAS subsidiary Resort Travel, said that travel agents have three main advantages over consumer travel Web sites: the ability to find the lowest fare, the ability to see all fares associated with all seats and city pairs, and the service they're able to provide when a flight is canceled or delayed.
Noting that most consumer travel sites are owned by the airlines, Tomcich said that, "Consumer Web sites are getting better and better but they're merely an interface between the airline and the consumer. And they've been really successful in convincing the consumer that they're getting the best deals all the time by shopping online. As a result the airlines are reaping rewards of millions of dollars in extra revenue."
It's true that sometimes the online search engines can find the lowest fare, particularly for specific dates and specific city pairs, said Tomcich and others interviewed for this story. But a travel agent has access to a database - called the GDS or global distribution system - that contains all the airlines' fares and allows an agent to build a search using any number of criteria. So if a customer has flexible travel dates and is looking for an affordable fare, for example, a travel agent can prioritize the lowest fare available. With one-way fares, multi-city stops and open-jaw travel (originating in one city and ending in another), travel agents can be invaluable in finding reasonable fares beyond the traditional point-to-point search options consumer Web sites like Expedia and Sidestep offer.
That doesn't mean that consumers should forego the valuable services that consumer Web sites offer, such as the ability to be more knowledgeable about routes and options than travelers in the past have had, "but there are too many variables to make it practical for every situation." said Rutgers. Airlines are "banking on the Web sites to do the job of travel agents. And they're a great shopping tool; we use them all the time, but if you live here and you have the weather, it's something we can track."
Full disclosure: This story idea was born of a personal travel experience. After weeks of constantly checking consumer travel sites, I went to a travel agent for help with finding affordable fares for my wedding in Brazil. With the help of an experienced travel agent at Stay Aspen Snowmass - and the luck of having a new, direct route recently open up - some guests were able to book an international ticket that was hundreds of dollars less than what I originally found on the consumer Web sites.
"Anybody can get on the Net and if they put the time in, sooner or later they can get what they need, but what's that time worth?" said Reed.
lutz@aspendailynews.com
