In Reply to: Booking yourself vs booking via agent posted by Jody on Thursday, 30. June 2005 at 09:52 Bali Time:
your questions but I can say what we found works for us.We book our airfare & minimum land content through a travel agent & then do our own thing after those 3 or 4 nights.I am no travel agent but from my understanding in order to get most of the cheap airfares you need to book & pay for about 3 > 4 nights accomodation.The number of nights depends on what the hotel charges & if it works out to the set figure of mimimum land content.Sometimes it is worthwhile staying at few extra nights at the original hotel because they may have a special on such as pay 3 get 1 night free or pay 4 get 2 nights free. Just may sure you carefully look at what's on offer to get your best deal.
After you pay your travel agent you are given a voucher to hand in at the hotel.Some people don't use their accomodation they just show up at the hotel & pass in the vouchers because if they don't the hotel doesn't get paid- they then move onto their preferred hotel.I have read that sometimes if you do this that it is wise to reconfirm your flights.
We have got to the stage now that we know which hotels we like in certain areas that we visit,we notify them via email before we leave of the approxiamate day we will be arriving in their area & they always give us a good price.You can bargain the rates at most hotels as a walk in customer or contact them via email before you leave.Once you become a repeat customer you get looked after even more.Hope this info has been some help.