There's always a mixed bag of reviews on travel agents. You hear you find better deals with them, better without them, they help you, they hurt you... And that's without even getting into the online travel agents like Expedia, etc. What is the answer?
Honestly I think it depends. Here in the US, I'm not likely to use one -- I don't think I ever have other than the first trip to Japan. My parents did for some trips before the web was prevalent, but I wasn't really booking independent trips at that point. By the time I was in college and independently booking travel, it was all about the web, pretty much. When I accepted the job with Nova I used their travel agent to book my flights because it was simpler for a one year open-ended return. I probably wouldn't do that again. I did use Air-Treks when I went US-Fiji-Australia in November 2004, but that I view as essentially similar to using Travelocity.
When I've been overseas it's different... When in Spain in Jan 2003 and planning to come home sooner than planned, I walked into a travel agent on Wednesday and bought a one-way ticket home for Sunday. Easy peasy. In Japan I can't imagine not using a travel agent -- the befuddling thing was having to pay cash for tickets. In Australia, both when I was there in 2002 and bought as last-minute one-way ticket from Brisbane to Melbourne and in 2004/5 when I was booking travel, agents were far more common.
Is it cultural? I don't really know. What do you think?
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