The above is a picture of the ship I was on when I took my Hawaii trip. Some of the cruises I've taken over the years were booked by my former cruise partner. Other cruises I've taken were booked using a large travel agency or directly through the cruise line. Now, RQS and I are looking to use a local travel agent affiliated with a larger travel agency to set things up for a California Coast trip we are interested in taking.
Why use a local travel agent instead of using a random person from the cruise line or from a large travel agency? In our case, we wanted to find out whether it was worth the effort to hand off some of the mundane arrangements to someone who gets paid by the travel suppliers. And the jury is still out for me in this regard.
In the future, I plan to take trips which require much more planning than a simple cruise to Canada and back. For example, I'm looking to take a Norwegian Fjord cruise. One of the cruises I'm interested in starts in Southampton, UK and sails to both Norway and Iceland. Travel to countries in the EU Schengen Zone requires one kind of pass for US citizens, while the UK has its own travel requirements. If I am happy with the service an individual agent can give me, I will use that agent for more of my trips. If not, I will need to find other ways that I can minimize the research headaches I must endure to travel where I want to travel.
Yet, not all travel questions can be answered by a travel agent. For example, how open to gender non conforming travel is a destination? In my case, I have skipped several islands on Caribbean cruises, so that I am not hassled by their customs personnel. To get this information, I may need to ask friends in the LGBT community for help. And then, I might end up contacting several tourist bureaus directly - but not using my normal snail mail or email addresses for requesting this information.
Hopefully, one day, I will be able to travel freely, to anywhere I want, as Marian. Until then, it pays to be careful.
