Traveling with a Passion

Everyone loves a vacation!  Time to get away from everyday schedules and chores.  Time to do something fun.  Doing something fun can have several meanings.  Some prefer to hang by the pool or beach.  Others like to do extensive shopping trips.  Some enjoy visiting historic places and museums.  There are vacations for all of these and more.

Some vacations can even take on a theme.  For example, Jimmy Buffett fans may enjoy visiting all the various Margaritaville Cafe locations.  While the trip itself may not have been designed specifically for that, it is fun to include these stops along the way.  Kind of like collecting sea shells from different beaches.

There are a variety of passions or hobbies that can add a little fun and playfulness.  Start a new trend on your next trip.

Full service vs. Self service - Makes Travel $ense

With everyone's busy schedules nowadays, it just makes sense to do things that help to free up time.  The current economy also makes it important to find the best value.

Planning a vacation is one of the activities that can take up a lot of time.  Especially when research is involved for new destinations and types of vacations.

This is where a Travel Agent/Consultant or whatever other term may be used to describe them comes in as a valuable time saving tool.  The education and day to day experience that agents have afford them the ability to offer suggestions on the type of vacation that is being considered.

We often hear "but that is the same price as the website".  Here is where the added value comes in.  Does the website personally respond to emails, answer the phone, return calls?  Will the website offer unbiased opinions and alternative suggestions?  Will the website be there after the deposit is made to answer questions?   Try getting the website to file a complaint after travel on something that may have gone wrong.

Think of it this way.  When driving down the road and the full service gas station is offering the same price as the self service station, which would you prefer?