I have an excellent travel agent that I seldom use. Why? Because I can do most of it myself. Ut if I am out of my depth, I will call her. She worked/works for a brick and mortar agency that is part of a consortium. They specialize in high end cruises. I can book my own Carnival, Celebrity, HAL, MSC, Princess…you get the idea. It when I saw a bargain fare on Crystal, I called her. And when we were going to try Wind Star, I called her. Only once have I got a small OBC, and a specialty meal. But when she was invaluable was when I booked an odyssey of travel. We started our travel going cross country on Amtrak, to San Diego. When we went to check into the cruise, my sister could not find her credit cards. We were starting with a Panama Canal cruise to FLL, continuing Harwich, with two more to follow. Calling home, her daughters found her card holder with cards on the floor of her car, where it had fallen from her purse. The TA arranged for us to send the cards to the Celebrity luggage facility in FL, under the guise of medication (they wouldn’t accept responsibility for the credit cards). And a limo to pick us up at FLL, take us to the office and bring us back to the ship.
When I cruised on a line that she didn’t have much or any experience with, I would collect the dailies and menus and take them to her when I returned so that if any clients asked about them, she had something in her files to refer to.
When you call a new agency, you should interview them to see what their cruise experience is. EM