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How to Be Your Own Travel Agent; the Crafty Traveller
By Fred Mawer
 Specialist holiday websites mean you can now 'build' a tailor-made trip on the internet. Fred Mawer looks at the pluses and pitfalls.
THINKING about a city break this autumn? You'll no doubt be considering two options - going for a package from a tour operator or doing it yourself, booking the flights with the airline and the accommodation with the hotel.
But there is a middle, third way. Over the past few years, online travel companies such as Expedia and lastminute.com have been developing and improving technology that allows you to construct a break for yourself, on a single website.
You can go away for as long you want and pick flights and accommodation to suit from dozens of options. It's also often possible to book additional elements, such as transfers, car hire, theatre tickets, museum passes and so forth.
That's a tailor-made holiday, I hear you say. Exactly right. But the difference is that the websites' clever search engines allow you to do it all for yourself. You're effectively being your own travel agent.
In travel industry jargon, this way of booking a holiday is called 'dynamic packaging' (though you'll rarely come across that phrase on websites, instead click on 'build your own holiday' or 'flight + hotel').
Sales of dynamic packages are increasing dramatically - last minute.com says this type of booking is growing by around 45 per cent a year. Many other players, including big traditional tour operators such as Thomas Cook, are getting in on the act. They see it as their salvation - an internet-age replacement for their inflexible, old-fashioned package holidays, and a means of persuading us not to go down the DIY route.
So, what are its advantages, and disadvantages?
Go to www.expedia.co.uk, state where you want to fly from, what dates you want to travel - and, if you have a broadband connection, in a matter of seconds the website will offer you flights with eight airlines and more than 100 hotels.
The flights are listed in order of price, and you can pare down the choice to a particular airline, or to those airlines that fly direct. The hotels are all described in some detail, and you can list them in order of price or star rating, and see where they are on a map. Once you've made your choices, you can add on insurance, car parking at a UK airport, car hire, and tickets for a show or helicopter trip.
SPEED OF BOOKING
THE Las Vegas example makes it easy to see how much time dynamic packaging can save you.
You're also told immediately which airline seats and hotel rooms are available - getting round the problem for DIY bookers of paying for a flight, then hoping you can find a suitable hotel, or vice versa.
The other important timesaving element is that one payment can cover every part of the trip.
FINANCIAL PROTECTION
WHEN you buy a dynamic package, combining flights and another element such as accommodation, from an online travel company, your money will be protected by an Air Travel Organiser's Licence, or COST ATOL (look for the ATOL logo on such websites).
By contrast, if you go down the DIY route and book direct with the airline and the hotel, or if you book flights and accommodation with different companies, then you could well lose out if any of the companies were to go bust.
COST
DYNAMIC packagers such as Expedia get big discounts from airlines and hotels, on the understanding that flights and accommodation are sold together so as not to disclose the actual size of the discounts.
The packagers therefore make a song and dance about how booking a flight and hotel together will cost less than booking them separately.
But is this true?
I compared the cost of booking a dynamic package against booking identical flights and accommodation direct with the airline and hotel - and this is what I found.
For a weekend break for two to Amsterdam in mid-October, flying British Airways from Gatwick, staying two nights at the Tulip Inn Amsterdam Centre, lastminute.
com quoted [pounds sterling]364.96. Booked direct with BA and the hotel, the total came to [pounds sterling]412.01 - so lastminute.com offered a saving of [pounds sterling]47.
It was the same story for a fivenight package to Las Vegas for two in mid-November, flying Virgin Atlantic from Gatwick, staying at the New York New York. Expedia quoted [pounds sterling]1,284.55, undercutting the DIY option of booking direct with Virgin and the hotel by [pounds sterling]72.
I also discovered that dynamic packages worked out cheaper than comparable traditional packages - which you would expect, given that dynamic packagers are not saddled with many of the conventional tour operator's costs, such as reservations staff and production of brochures.
Cresta Holidays, a leading city-break tour operator, quoted [pounds sterling]602 for the Amsterdam package - that's a whopping [pounds sterling]237 more than lastminute.com (though Cresta's rate did include breakfast, which I suspect wasn't part of last minute.com's deal). As for the Vegas break, with leading American tour operator Virgin Holidays it would have set me back [pounds sterling]195 more than Expedia's price.
Want even clearer evidence? For a two-night trip for a couple to Rome in mid-October, flying BA from Gatwick and staying in the Hotel White, Thomas Cook's city breaks tour operator quoted [pounds sterling]887. For an identical break, Thomas Cook's dynamic packaging website, flexibletrips.com, priced it at [pounds sterling]807.24 - that's nearly [pounds sterling]80 less.
THE CONS...
NO EXPERTISE
A KNOWLEDGEABLE travel agent can point you towards the most suitable flights and accommodation. By contrast, if you're putting together a dynamic package, you have to make the decisions yourself. And, while a good specialist tour operator will handpick, inspect and feature the best accommodation in a destination, if you're picking accommodation from a dynamic packager's website, you'll have to separate the wheat from the chaff yourself.
LIMITED AIRLINE CHOICE
CHARTER and no-frills airlines do not work with most dynamic packagers - a major drawback when putting together cheap packages to European resorts and cities. However, the situation is changing. Lastminute.com has recently begun to offer Ryanair, along with a couple of charter airlines, for its dynamic packages. But flexibletrips.com leads the way here - it sells dynamic packages using Ryanair, easyJet, Flybe, Jet2.com and Thomsonfly, as well as several charters.
NOT SUITABLE FOR EVERY TYPE OF HOLIDAY
AT PRESENT, you can't book more than one hotel on a dynamic package - so the concept won't work for more complicated multi-stay trips, such as touring holidays.
Also, the range of accommodation is generally limited to mainstream hotels (you're unlikely to find villas or B&Bs, for example).
And, while the geographical spread of accommodation available on dynamic packages is increasing to cover destinations as far-flung as Sydney, Cape Town, Thailand and Mexico, the widest choice of hotels is still in European and American cities.
Source: The Mail on Sunday
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