For our holiday promotion this year, we’re partnering with Heifer International. With your help, we hope to give the gift of a water buffalo to a deserving community. Why a water buffalo, you ask? Water buffalos provide rich milk with lots of protein and nutrients, and they help farmers to plant four times as many crops, till the fields, and provide necessary fertilizer. Join ActiveTravels or purchase an annual membership for a friend or member of the family and $10 will go towards the purchase of a water buffalo. If we get 25 new memberships during the months of November and December, our goal will be met and we can provide sustenance for a needy community. Already, we have 4 new memberships in the past 2 weeks. Thank you!

 

Still not convinced you need a travel agent in this day and age. Here are some thoughts to consider:

 

Overcome Analysis Paralysis—A recent study said that the average person spends 29 hours researching his next vacation. Spend as much time on the web as your heart desires, but realize that as a member of ActiveTravels, you can bounce ideas off a travel writer that’s been to over 80 countries. You’ll get unbiased travel advice from someone who’s been to that exact location. 

 

Better Rooms—In an upcoming article I wrote for the Boston Globe, I discuss how hotels treat third-party bookings from Priceline, Travelocity, Hotels.com, as their least important priority. You’re given the worst room in the house because there’s no sense of loyalty with these sites. The travel business is all about relationships. Aligned with Virtuoso, we have relationships with hotel GMs around the globe and we call them personally when we book one of our clients.

 

Customer Service—Flight cancelled? Lost luggage? Have to reschedule a flight? Good luck dealing with Orbitz and Expedia. If you’ve gone through this recently, you know the pain. A travel agent makes those calls for you and has contacts at the airlines the public does not have. 

 

Contacts Around the Globe—Want to travel independently to India, Patagonia, or Thailand? Have fun researching that journey on the web. It’s an exhausting task. We work with excellent ground operators in Delhi, Buenos Aires, and Bangkok who know their country intimately and can help with all the logistics. 

 

Annual membership to ActiveTravels is $60 per year, less than dinner for two at a halfway decent restaurant. We guarantee you’ll get your money’s worth!