Government Traveller's Airfares... Did You Know?

If you have a government issued credit card, then I am allowed to ticket published government airfares. However, if you use a GTR, I'm not allowed to process those. We can also designate separate account numbers for those traveller's who need to receive statements which show separate listings for personal travel, campaign travel and government travel etc etc.

So if you travel on a government issued credit card and are looking for an awesome travel agent, email me and I'll be happy to help you with your travel arrangements. New customers always welcome.

I'm also able to reserve government rates at hotels and of course, will always make sure that if there is a lower rate offered, I will let you know and reserve it for you. In regard to car rentals, just know that not all "government rates" for car rentals are the least expensive. So I'm always happy to search for other lower rates, even with your preferred car rental company.

Jaguar Travel Group is an officially approved travel agency by the Financial Management Office for the United States Capitol Police in Washington, DC.

Rules and Consequences for your Travel Agent

In my day to day job, I put several scenarios together for the customer, however I can NOT reserve all of them indefinitely. The airlines, regardless of your personal mileage status with them, will NOT allow me to hold a reservation for more than 24 hours without issuing a ticket for the itinerary. I do not make a salary, I get paid based on how many tickets I issue, not how many hours in a day I work or how many flight scenarios I put together for traveller's. I don't mind doing that part because it's all part of my job. I work hard for what money I do make in this business.

The airlines send debit memos to the travel agency for excessive bookings, undercharging on a reissue or simply breaking one of the airlines many rules, which vary from carrier to carrier. If the agency receives a debit memo, and if it's found to be "my error", then I personally have to pay for the error out of my own pocket. My travel company does not cover for "errors and omissions". This business is like gambling to me and I've never been lucky at gambling. Believe it or not, it's extremely stressful. I take alot of pride in what I do and I hate making mistakes, especially those that affect my financial bottom line or the travellers travel experience.

The airlines would be just as happy if travel agents didn't exist, to leave the traveller "on their own" without any expert travel resources. They'd perfectly satisfied with outsourcing your phone call to an inexperienced reservation agent, where they respond with scripted responses. I've had 27 years of experience in the corporate travel business and have always prided myself on my expertise, honesty, accuracy and efficiency. I cringe when I need to call for additional travel assistance from them, because they have proven to be pretty much useless to me. If my question seems too complicated, sometimes I'll even hang up the phone, call back and hope to stay stateside with a more experienced representative.

Without a travel agent, people are on their own. I love my work as a corporate travel agent and I hope to be doing this job for many more years to come.

Fare Rule Interpretation.....It Never Gets Easier

Join the club on fare rule interpretation!! LOL Heck, it changes all the time and when in doubt, I call the airline and hope I get someone smarter than me. Basically, all of the airlines have different rules, yet similiar too. It varies from airline to airline and that's where it can get crazy. I keep profile info on each different airline that I frequently use and update the basic rules as they change.  Needless to say, I'm constantly updating my airline profile information.

A few of the key rules to know, especially when it comes to domestic, nonrefundable fares are:

1. How far in advance does that airline require a passenger to cancel in order to maintain the travel funds?

2. How much is the basic penalty to change (you can almost always find that in section 16 of the fare rule). I'm 99pct sure that would be the same place on Sabre too.

3. It's important to know and to be able to determine if the "round trip" ticket is based on a "round trip" fare or "two one way fares" and if that particular carrier will allow you to change the return before you've begun travel or if you have to start theh price all over again or if they're just changing their return and travel has already begun, what those rules are. I'm telling you, it's not real easy and most of the time, when I call the airline just to "ease my mind" I pretty much know the answer, I just need someone to tell me I'm right. There are so many little loopholes and sadly that's what gets many people caught up in debit memo's. I'm thinking that SABRE too (like Apollo) has an automated exchange program where SABRE figures out your add collect too. The thing I don't like about those programs is that you can't get the information unless you've already cancelled and rebooked which could really put you in a jam, especially if you broke the rules of the fare by making the change or whatever.

You practically have to be a lawyer to be able to interpret fare rules!!

I could say so, so much more, have to watch black out dates, same day confirm/change rules and options (only can be done by the airline directly in most cases) and all of those fees vary from airline to airline, as do the hours in advance it can be done as well as required inventory needed.  You have to pay attention to day of week restrictions, minimum/maximum stay requirements. Sometimes exchanges are a piece a cake, but they can get rather involved if you start to "think" too much, but the fear of a debit memo requires us to "think" of all the different scenarios and possible problems (debit memo's) which could arise by making the changes.

I personally haven't been on SABRE in years, but the concept is the same as APOLLO/Galileo, and has all the same bells and whistles per se.

Basically the best rule of thumb is, if in doubt, get a 2nd or 3rd opinion. Eventually, you'll learn what to focus on and what's most important. You'll also learn to keep notes for future reference so you'll have someplace to start, especially if you have a customer on the phone and you're trying not to sound like a bumbling idiot!! That's when I throw in the "dang, you almost have to be a lawyer to read these stupid rules!!" The passengers are very understanding to that comment, even if they're an attorney, they totally understand.

The key at being an awesome corporate travel agent is honesty and great communication skills, if you don't know, there's no shame in admitting to that, but people always expect the following comment to be "but let me find out for you". 

 

The Perfect Seat

Now that traveller's can change their seating assignments online and pick and choose "the perfect seat", I'd like to make a request of you my wonderful client.

Please let me know if you've changed your seats yourself, because when the airline sends me a message saying that the passenger no longer has that seat, I tend to not look at the history because I have so many people who I monitor seat charts for on a daily basis and don't take the time to research or remember who and which reservation I had originally sent back to myself to monitor.

What I'm trying to say in a nutshell is, just let me know that you've changed your seating assignments so that I don't go in and undo what you've done, thinking that you have nothing at all, because when you make changes, the airlines DO NOT send me a message to tell me what you do have. For some reason, they seem to think I don't need to know this information *eye roll*. They just tell me that you no longer have a seating assignment confirmed and good ole Luanne, I'm right back on it, trying to find you that "perfect seat" when all I am really doing is probably undoing what you already did. Don't say I didn't warn ya ;-)

That Sucks!!!!

Bravo!! I couldn't have said that better myself.  I love it when an attorney responds to me with "That Sucks"!!   I mean, no mincing words here.  *smile*  Thank you for saying it like it is and really telling me how you feel.  Love it, love it, love it!!  And you know why he said that?  Because I told him, that for a flight on November 1st, I was not able to pre-assign an aisle for him and here it is September 21st.  Thank goodness his wife is travelling with him and she prefers the window and he was ok with that.  I don't mind monitoring to see if I can improve seats, but thank you for being willing to set in the center seat next to your wife, because that's one less reservation I need to monitor daily to try and improve seating assignments.  Some folks don't even get a seating assignment this far in advance or are stuck in the last row, non-reclining center seat.

 

It's not just one airline either!!  They all suck!!  So what else is new.  They're all jumping on this same band wagon, blocking aisle seats out and making people pay just a little bit more to get those preferred seats!!  Sometimes you can get them outside of 24 hours, sometimes you have to wait and do it no sooner than 24 hours, sometimes if you are a "super duper" frequent flyer with that airline, you can get the preferred seats outside the 24 hour window unless other "super duper" frequent flyers already beat you to it. Some airlines let you buy a membership which is good for a year which allows you to pre-assign the premium seats, even though you might not be a "super duper" frequent flier.  The airlines keep getting richer all the time, finding new ways to extort money out of the traveller and companies, yet they're always crying poor house!!  I guess I wouldn't be complaining if I was married to one of these CEO's of the airlines, but I'm not.  They keep finding new and innovative ways to pad their pockets!!  And they sure hit the mark when they realized what people would do to get an aisle seat!!  Ka-chink, ka-chink, ka-chink!! 

 

Aside from that, but still relevant, another thing which really ticks me off is when you book an airline ticket online (for whatever reason) for a passenger and you don't get to hear the bad news about "airport check in only" for advanced seat selection until AFTER you've bought the nonrefundable ticket!!  Grrrrrrrrr, what a ripoff!!  That surely sucks!!  Geez, why don't they just do away with the frequent flyer miles program too.  That would surely start WWIII *rollin' my eyes* amongst our nations frequent traveller's.  The airlines have taken all of the other amenities away.  If a person really really wants to fly first class and be guaranteed a first class seat on an international flight, they can expect to pay $10,000.00 for a round trip.  So you can bet that the majority of folks who are seated in first class on international flights are all "super duper" frequent fliers on that airline, but chances are they either used miles to upgrade or during the online check in process, they were offered a super deal to upgrade from a 2000.00 round trip ticket for an extra 1000.00.  Sure beats 10K for a guaranteed first class seat!!  I can't even begin to keep up with these airlines. Their game rules change daily and none of them are exactly the same.  Even Air Tran is charging for certain aisle seats.  15.00 here and 15.00 there.