We constantly hear that agents are a dying breed due to the internet.
On the contrary, we are getting busier, as most clients haven't got a simple itinerary (we don't sell SYD/MEL tickets for example)
Most of our consultants, work hard & earn good money & get a few perks.
Many people stupidly believe, if an airfare is found at an online search engine, it must be cheapest.
The reality is, almost 100% of the time, fares on different search engine sites are within a few dollars of each other.
We often get the emails that says something like …
we know you probably can't beat it, but we have found online, A to B return for $x.
We mostly only sell USA/Canada & mostly Xmas school holidays & we can always do better, if well in advance.
At last minute, which can mean different things, but we think of it, as inside 2 months before departure, there's very little left that's cheap.
Sometime, our clients have to cancel & with most of our tickets, we can do a name change for a fee paid to airline, so can onsell clients tickets who can't travel.
This is generally the only way we can offer cheap fares to USA/Canada within 2 months of departure for Xmas school holidays, the busiest period of the year, meaning from mid Oct.
That said, in the rare situation, where we haven't sold all of our allocation of seats(which we've paid for), 2 months out, then we may have some cheap seats.
@travelwiz: We flew to Vietnam over Xmas with a 7 year old. Plane left at 11pm both times. She was great and gave us no problems. She them promptly curled up on the seat and went to sleep for the entire flight until it landed in the morning.
Why wouldn't you travel on the red eye with kids. Best way to travel.