Travel Agency Stories

During travels, I get a lot of What travel agency? reply in my Instagram Stories. When I plan/DIY all my travels.

Why? I've experienced a lot of disappointments with travel agencies over the years and it always ends up feeling like a scam. (I still believe there are a lot of quality business out there, but I'm done risking it)

Air You Go Travel - Boracay

This travel agency hosted one of the cheapest sale I've seen in a while for Boracay. And of course, we wanted our cheap way in.

Their process wasn't really a win-win. They get all the glory. And we got stuck, because our money is already in their hands.

So here's the story: before they entertain any clients, we first must book on their website and pay via bank transfer (the next day because banks close at 5PM). So when payment was made I immediately emailed the receipt and a few chitchats later, the promo became fully booked 👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻. What can I do now? It is stated that they don't do refunds on their site (but who would've thought that the promo we already paid for doesn't guarantee us a flight 💁🏻). A very smart modus if you think about it. 🤔

Oh and by the way, the promo was still being promoted in social media after it is fully booked. 

Our only option now is to either 1.) wait for a new promo with the same price (never happened) or 2.) pay more money for them to book stuff for us.

The email thread became idle a few times, it took days before they reply, and I had to question their credibility so that they answer my queries again. They already have our money. 

Some may say that it's all written in their terms and agreements, but at the end of the day, customer satisfaction wasn't met. 

Travel is Awesome - Five Fingers Bataan

A lot of things went wrong with this one.

• Itinerary wasn't followed, by the end of our second to the last location, the guide started talking badly about our next destination, just so that we could skip it.
• We were in 2 groups (2 full vans), and we had to wait hours for the other van before we could start with our adventures. And then when they arrived, they had to change to swimming outfits first like we weren't way behind our itinerary 🙃.
• By 2 vans, I meant our 2 groups took turns using 1 van (the other group commuted going to Bataan)
• Wasted a lot of hours looking for a place to stay, because our guide didn't make sure of the booking the day before and now the place we were supposed to stay in is fully booked.
• They almost made 12 people stay in 1 small room. We complained and good thing they listened. And then tried to guilt trip us multiple times that they are already using their own money for our satisfaction 👻
• The next day, they said that we'd go back to where we slept, because this is where we'll take a bath and freshen up, so it was kind of a turn off that they made us bring all our stuff back to the van.
• And surprise surprise, we were only going to take a bath in their common bathroom area ✨

Mekka Adventure and Tours - Cebu

This is the worst travel of my life because the blame was placed on me 🙄. 

This was for our company outing in Cebu (I was a committee). 

One day the admin handed us (the committee) a paper with the proposed meals and itinerary by the agency. So it's decided. We'll book in this agency. We (committee) never had a voice in this part of the planning 🙅🏻💸.

A lot was off with the itinerary. We tried breaking it down and fixing it and there were still not enough time when we were already there. 

The main issue was that the agency couldn't handle a group of 44 people. We expected that they knew what they were doing. We have met with the coordinator once, when they traveled to Luzon before our trip. We had a lot of questions but they were confident about everything.

And here are some things that didn't go as plan:

• One of the rules were all our vans should be together, but on the first day, the first one already went into separate ways.
• On the first night, they already decided to go somewhere that wasn't in the itinerary.
• The meals they listed wasn't followed. And weren't enough. A lot of us didn't eat which just means more complaints.
• Maybe it's not a surprise anymore but the itinerary wasn't followed. A lot were skipped.
• The lechon they prepared didn't taste like the Cebu Lechon I recently tried just a month ago 😭
• Water was scarce where we stayed. The committee was blamed for this too when we never knew, we never went to South Cebu before. 👻😭
• The boys were jampacked in small rooms. The agency said they will all fit just fine. It was way too crowded with little space to move in.

What is the difference if we didn't book in a travel agency?

Comparing with this trip, to the recent one I took in Cebu; I probably spent the same amount of money with the amount per pax we paid the agency (it was written in the paper they gave us 😅).

This time I slept in an air conditioned room for 3 days straight with hot shower, a hair dryer, a big curved TV, wifi, Netflix. We spent way too much with grab. We ate Cebu lechon for 3 days in different restaurants. We went back and forth to South Cebu for 2 days. And in the end my bestie and I were in a slight shock that we didn't spend a lot. That was the difference with not booking a travel agency ☀️.