I don’t understand this. I always try three or four different approaches to booking air fares. Usually, I look at Expedia, Travelocity and a few individual airline schedules. I always search for the lowest economy class flight. However, almost 90% of the time, my travel agent seems to find a cheaper flight without changing any of the search parameters (departure city/number of legs etc). I think that she gets paid between $25 and $50 each time she finds a flight but the combined total of the cost of the ticket and her fee is usually WAY below the price given by either the airline website or the low cost websites. This has been bugging me for a while but I was prompted to write when NPR had a news report that Bay Area travel agents are suing airlines (class action) because of price fixing. Apparently, all major carriers have synchronised the phasing out of paying travel agents a commission on ticket sales. The question is, how do travel agents find cheaper flights than I seem to be able to? Do they have special software, hardware or am I not using the tools available to me for booking flights correctly?
My understanding is that the agents buy the seats and sell them on. At least that’s how it was explained to me (pre e-commerce days).
I certainly agree with you - I haven’t found the likes of travelocity etc to be good value for a while now- I use them to look up a itineries then look around for better deals.