Who is the best travel agent in Hawke's Bay?

There isn't one. There's a best travel agent for the trip you're planning, and which one that is depends on what you actually need — because travel agencies are not all doing the same job. Some are built to move a high volume of bookings quickly. Others are built to sit down with you and construct one trip properly. They suit completely different travellers, and knowing which is which is most of the decision.

Not all travel agents do the same job

Coming in here and sitting down with someone is our specialty. Not all agencies do this. Some will book you the flight, the rail pass and the accommodation you asked for, and out you go. That's a real service and for plenty of people it's the right one.

That comes down to design, not quality. A high-volume agency makes its money by getting through more bookings in a day, which means less time on each one. A tailor-made agency makes its money by getting a single trip right, which takes questions, research and time. Neither model is better. They're built for different customers, and the trouble starts when a traveller ends up in the wrong one.

What most people think we do, and what the job actually is

After thirty years I still find that people don't really know what a travel agent does. There's an assumption we book flights. That's a small part of it, and honestly it's the least valuable part.

Here's what does surprise me. People will spend weeks researching something online worth thirty or forty dollars before they commit to buying it. Then on a Sunday night an ad comes up on Facebook for a cruise, and they'll book it without knowing the ship, the size of the vessel, or what's actually included. Tens of thousands of dollars, at the drop of a hat.

That gap is the whole argument for using an agent, and it has very little to do with booking.

Who should skip the agent and book it themselves

I'll be straight about who we're not for.

If you've been booking your own travel online for ten years and you know exactly what you want, why would you come to us? You can do it yourself, and you'll do it faster. We're not going to pretend otherwise. Chasing the cheapest deals is a race to the bottom of the cliff, and it's not a race we enter. We can still book lower-end holidays and we do, but the time it takes to service a bargain hunt costs more than the booking earns. That's just the economics, and it's why some agencies are structured around volume and we aren't.

If that's you, book it yourself with your eyes open. A few things are genuinely yours to handle now.

The rules.

Does where you're going need a visa, and how long does one take to come through? What are the entry requirements this year? How much validity does your passport need left on it when you land, and for how long after? Get any of those wrong and the cheapest fare in the world doesn't board. Nobody at a booking site is checking them on your behalf.

What happens when the plan moves.

Flights get changed. A weather event closes an airport. Airspace shuts. Self-booked, that's you, a chatbot, a help page and a hold queue, usually in a different time zone from anyone who can authorise a change. Understanding what an airline's policy actually means in practice is hard when you're the one reading it at 2am.

The knock-on.

This is where cheapest stops being cheapest. The fare was fine until something shifted. Then comes the replacement flight bought on the day, at whatever the airline is charging that morning, the night of accommodation nobody planned for, the missed connection further down the chain, and the saving is gone several times over.

Book it yourself if that suits you. Just know that the booking was always the easy bit.

The five-step process YOU Travel Napier runs

If you want the trip built around you instead, here's the whole process. At YOU Travel Napier it's five steps, and it's the same five whether you're planning a fortnight in Italy or a six-week trip with four countries in it.

1. Touch base - A conversation, ideally face to face. We get further in half an hour in a room than in a fortnight of emails.
2. Consultation and planning - This is the real work. We ask a lot of questions, and we keep asking. It's a bit like poker — you have to work out what's in the other person's hand, because they won't just tell you. People hold one thing back and it turns out to be the thing that matters most. A swim-up pool bar. E-bikes. If your budget and the experience you're describing don't meet, we'll say so here rather than let you find out later.
3. A draft itinerary - We put together a plan and show it to you.
4. Amendments - You tell us what's wrong with it. We change it. That's the point of a draft.
5. Lock it in - Bookings, deposits, payments, and your documentation.

Plenty of people still want hard copies, and we still do them. A proper wallet with everything in it. I'll tell clients nobody ever looks at it, and then the system's down at a counter somewhere and your name's been spelled three different ways, and being able to pull out a piece of paper solves the whole thing.

What the expertise actually covers

Once we've talked and I understand that you need to get there, you need a car and you need somewhere to stay, that's where the value was created. The rest is admin.

Start with the network. When you come to us, you're my point of contact, but sitting behind me is a whole layer of expertise — airline people, tour operators, cruise specialists. The skill is knowing which one to ask. One of our consultants, Zara, had clients who wanted Africa. She'll tell you herself she didn't know Africa deeply, but she knew which questions mattered and which of our suppliers spend every day on that continent. That's how the answer gets to you.

Then there's the shopping. We'll look across four or five suppliers for the same product, and the difference can run to hundreds of dollars, because one does more volume in Europe and another does more in the US, so their rates differ. That comparison isn't visible from the outside.

And there's how we assess a property before we put you in it: which reviews carry weight, what a star rating does and doesn't actually include, and the costs that don't show on the booking page. Both of those are worth a read on their own — how we read hotel reviews, and why a good four star usually serves Kiwi travellers better than chasing five.

The other thing experience buys is knowing where the risk sits. I had a client in Singapore, about to board the next leg to Europe, when the notice came through that his third-party accommodation booking had been cancelled. Here's your money back. That call comes to us, not to him.

Matching the trip to the traveller

Flights and accommodation used to be the product. Now it's the experience, and that's a different thing to sell.

Take cruising. Some fares are all-inclusive and some are far more optional. Putting a non-drinker on an all-inclusive that's priced around its drinks package is the wrong product for them. Viking has no children, no casinos, no photographers. A Disney ship is a different proposition entirely. Those small differences are what separate a good trip from a great one.

The same thinking applies to how you move once you're there, which people underestimate more than anything else. Car, train, flight, tour or cruise each ask something different of you, and matching that to the traveller matters as much as choosing the destination. If a cruise is on your radar, that's a conversation worth having early.

Expectation-setting is part of the job too. Plenty of people came home not liking Bali because nobody told them what it would be. Hawkers following you down the street, a dollar twenty, a dollar ten. If you know that's coming, it's fine. If you don't, it ruins the week.

And when something does go wrong, you have someone. We can steer you toward or away from airlines with a certain pattern of behaviour. We know when there's a strike brewing. If you're stuck, you're not explaining yourself to an offshore call centre at the wrong hour, and we're still there once you're home if there's an insurance claim to lodge or something that needs chasing.

What it costs

Less than most people assume, and usually nothing extra.

For flights and cruises we're paid a commission by the supplier. If a cruise is advertised at five thousand, five thousand is what you pay through us. The cruise line bills us a lower wholesale rate and we keep the difference, which is our fee. It works much like a mortgage broker.

Which means we can't knock money off a headline price, and an agent who says they can is doing something odd. Margins in travel are thin. The upside is that our advice isn't bent by discounting. And what's advertised is simply the product a supplier needs to move. It's a supermarket special: only when you look around do you realise something not on special was better value.

So which is the best travel agent for you?

If you're price-first and confident, the best travel agent is probably no agent at all. Book online, check the fare rules, handle your own entry requirements.

If you want the trip built around you, what a fully tailored itinerary looks like is the place to start — and here's what to ask whoever you're considering:

• Who decides what they can sell you? An owner-operated agency chooses its own suppliers. A franchise often works from a head-office-approved list, and if head office is pushing a target on a particular supplier, that's what gets recommended.
• What do their accreditations let them do? TAANZ is the industry body. CLIA covers cruise. IATA is the one worth asking about, because it means the agency issues your airline ticket directly instead of going through an intermediary, which is what gets you rebooked faster when something changes.
• Do they ask questions, or reach for a brochure? You'll know inside ten minutes.
• What happens if something goes wrong at midnight, on the other side of the world?
• How are they paid? A straight answer here tells you a lot.
• Have they actually done the kind of trip you're planning?

(Whether to use an agent at all is a different question, and we've covered that separately.)

About YOU Travel Napier

YOU Travel Napier is built for the second kind of traveller, and we'd rather say so than claim to suit everyone. We build custom itineraries for travellers across Hawke's Bay, working with people in Napier, Hastings and the wider region from our office on Tennyson Street.

We're family-owned and locally operated. I own the business with my wife Gail, and our son Tyler works alongside us, so there are three generations in it. YOU Travel Napier has been going since 1997, and we've tracked more than 21,820 trips since our booking system started in 2002.

The team carries real experience rather than brochures. I've been at this thirty-odd years, Sarah Peck twenty-plus, Veronica Tabuteau thirty-plus with a background in hotels, Zara Geddes holds a Diploma in Travel and Tourism and is Hawke's Bay raised, and Tyler has five years in the industry and has been travelling all his life. Between us we've sailed, toured and driven much of what we recommend, and where we haven't, we know exactly who has.

If that sounds like the kind of help you want, start that conversation, or meet the team first.

Frequently asked questions

Who is the best travel agent in Hawke's Bay?

There isn't a single one. There's a best travel agent for you, and it depends whether you want the lowest price booked quickly or a trip designed around what you actually want. Work out which you need first, then choose an agency built for that job.

What's the difference between a boutique travel agent and a big chain?

Economics. A high-volume agency needs more bookings per day, so there's less time for each. A boutique agency makes its money getting one trip right, so it spends longer on questions and planning.

Will a travel agent build me a custom itinerary, or just sell me something off the shelf?

It depends on the agency. A tailor-made one runs a process: a first conversation, a consultation to work out what you actually want, a draft itinerary, amendments, then booking and documentation. If nobody asks you questions before showing you a product, you're being sold off the shelf.

What does a travel agent actually do that I can't do myself?

The booking is the easy part. The value is knowing which supplier to ask, reading hotel reviews properly rather than at face value, knowing what a star rating does and doesn't include, spotting costs like resort fees before you commit, and being reachable when something changes mid-trip.

Does using a travel agent cost more than booking direct?

Usually not. For flights and cruises the supplier pays the agent a commission, so the advertised price is generally what you pay either way — much like a mortgage broker. It also means an agent can't knock money off a headline price, which is normal rather than a warning sign.

What should I ask a travel agent before I book?

Who decides what they're allowed to sell you, what their accreditations actually enable, and how they'd approach your trip if you named a destination but weren't sure it was right. A tailor-made agency will ask questions and may suggest something that fits you better.