{"id":1572,"date":"2011-09-09T16:23:55","date_gmt":"2011-09-09T06:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/?p=1572"},"modified":"2011-09-09T16:24:27","modified_gmt":"2011-09-09T06:24:27","slug":"1572","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2011\/09\/09\/1572\/","title":{"rendered":"On Travel Agents"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something odd happened today, and I am trying to decide what it signifies about the future…<\/p>\n

Realising I had been procrastinating about booking some flights and accommodation, today I went to a travel agent and got it done.<\/p>\n

A travel agent. Bricks and mortar.<\/p>\n

I believe this is the first time in five years I have been to a travel agent, rather than booking online. I’ve grown tired of dealing with the confusopoly, losing money on incorrect tickets, having surprise charges sprung upon me.<\/p>\n

Note to web-sites: That extra fee you charge that you call the “credit-card processing fee”? Well, when the only way to pay is via credit-card, I call that “part of the price”, and I would appreciate it if it was included in the initial quote.<\/div>\n
\n

Actually, the story is slightly more complicated. I walked to a nearby travel-agent that I have never used before. It is an almost desolate office; the sign said “Open”, but the door was locked and there was no response to knocking – tried again 5 minutes later. I figure it is a front for a drug-running operation, which is cool, because I am tired of buying my illicit drugs off web-sites too.<\/p>\n

So, then I thought “You are being silly, Julian.” and tried to use a popular web-site. It made me choose flights based on the baggage-free prices (I will have plenty of baggage), sprung a $20 booking fee on me at the last minute (with no indication of whether I was going to be charged another<\/em> $20 when I booked my accommodation), and then – in the confirmation page – presented a totally different flight which left at 6:30am, and stopped off in Canberra along the way (neither of which suit me).<\/p>\n

I walked away, got in the car, and fought shopping-mall car-park traffic to get to a travel agent that was open – I knew I would be a few percent more for the tickets, but wanted to get the hell away from that web-site.<\/p>\n

\n

So, what I haven’t worked out is, which of these is true.<\/p>\n

Travel was always too complicated for people with no, or moderate, experience; online travel booking has been over-hyped, and the bubble is finally bursting; travel agents have their place, and will one day rightfully return to their valued role.<\/p>\n

I am a wuss with more dollars than sense, who is willing to pay someone to do a menial task.<\/p>\n

I can’t work out how to use a web-site; I can’t work out how to optimise a moderately-complex pricing model; I can’t plan ahead and provide sufficient attention to detail to work out an itinerary correctly. Thus, I am officially too old and senile to be a software developer any more, and I must hand in my badge and debugger.<\/p>\n

I need a nap; I’ll be back to booking my own journeys soon. And pretending that I wanted to be in Canberra at 7:15am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Realising I had been procrastinating about booking some flights and accommodation, today I went to a travel agent and got it done.<\/p>\n

A travel agent. Bricks and mortar.<\/p>\n

Odd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,35,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-based-on-a-true-story","category-heroic-failures","category-observation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1572"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1576,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572\/revisions\/1576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}