You want to talk to a TA, Travel Agent or Travel Advisor, but the one you want to talk to charges a fee. The trip you are considering already costs a good chunk of change, so do you really want to add another expense?

Well, lets look at a couple of the reasons a TA may charge a fee:

 – One of the biggest reasons is probably the time that it can take to work up a quote. Back and forth, trying to find the right resort and the right room with the right view and at the right price. A TA can spend a good deal of time trying to get the perfect combination. Then the client just stops writing back. The TA has been ghosted again. Did the client just get tired of all the choices, or did they take all the information that the TA gave them and went off and booked it directly? A lot of time spent by the TA only to end up with no booking and no money to show for all the time and effort put out.

 – Or did the TA actually get to make the booking but it ended up including excursions, air fare, one night hotel for the connecting flight, and a rental car. Most of this stuff pays very little if any commission, but takes more time than booking the actual resort.

We’ve been ghosted several times. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Did we do something wrong, did they book it themself, did they just give up because it was more expensive than they expected. The least they could do is to let us know why. After spending a lot of time putting together quotes, helping look for good flights, then getting nothing for it sure makes us ask ourselves why we don’t charge a fee up front, but we don’t.

One possibility is for the TA to charge a fee up front, then when they actually book the trip for the client, the fee comes off what they owe on the trip. But this can also cause problems. We don’t take money directly from the client and we don’t pay the resort out of our own pocket. So we’d have to work out the logistics of all that just to be able to make it work. So for now, we’ll continue not charging a fee and hope that potential clients understand how we get paid and that we do furnish a service that doesn’t cost them a dime. We get our commission directly from Sandals and the booking costs the same for the client. They don’t pay more in order for us to get the commission.