Travel agent or booking online: which suits your trip

When is booking online the better choice?

For a return flight and a hotel in one city, booking online is usually quick and perfectly adequate. You can compare fares yourself, read cancellation terms on the spot and pay directly. If you travel often, have no visa to arrange and are comfortable handling a cancellation with an airline's call centre, an agent adds little.

Read the fare rules before paying: whether the ticket can be changed, what a change costs, and whether a refund comes back as money or as credit. The same applies to hotels, where the lowest rate is often the one that cannot be cancelled. Booking yourself works well when you check these and keep every confirmation in one place.

What does a travel agent add?

An agent adds judgement and a single point of contact. That shows in the sequencing: visa appointment before non-refundable bookings, routings that suit the visa rules, hotels in the right part of a city, transfers timed to flights, and someone who rebooks a missed connection while you are still at the airport. For groups, an agent also holds the names and the payments together.

Does a travel agent cost more than booking online?

Sometimes, sometimes not. An agent may charge a service fee, and may also have access to rates and fares that are not shown publicly. The fair comparison is the total cost of the trip, including changes and cancellations, against the time you would spend arranging it. Ask any agent to show its service charge separately.

Tax collected at source applies the same way however you book. As published by the Income Tax Department, buying an overseas tour package from a seller in India, meaning at least two of an international ticket, a hotel stay or similar costs together, attracts it. A ticket alone or a hotel alone is not a package.

How do you check that a travel agent is genuine?

Look for a physical office, a GST-registered invoice in the agency's own name, and memberships you can verify. An IATA-accredited agency's code can be checked on IATA's CheckACode service. Be careful of anyone who asks for payment to a personal account, or who cannot send a booking reference you can confirm with the airline or hotel.

Can you mix both?

Yes, and many travellers do: flights booked online, and an agent for the visa, the hotels in a city they do not know and the transfers. Tell the agent what you have already booked so the plan is built around it, and share the booking references so a change on one side is caught on the other.