Hansen: Travel agents still make dreams happen

If you wait long enough, everything comes back: beards, vinyl, muscle cars and travel to Cuba.

It’s as if we crave retro. And there is perhaps nothing more nostalgic in Laguna Beach than walking into the Laguna Travel Service on Broadway Street.

From the Pan Am stickers to the Old World maps, the agency looks essentially unchanged since it started 68 years ago.

It has weathered the Internet, cheap flights and cruise-ship catastrophes. It has survived by sticking to its primary mission: serving the client.

“If you went online and said, ‘elephant ride for bride in Mexico,’ you’d probably find something, no doubt about it,” said owner Tony Sabar. “Whether that elephant is going to turn up or not is another thing.”

Sabar, who took over the business in 2006 from the son of the founder, admitted that the Internet took the wind out of the sails of the business — temporarily.

“We thought, ‘How do we compete with the likes of Google and Yahoo, backed by the likes of Travelocity and Orbitz?’” he said. “But we turned that corner rather well over the last three or four years.”

Sabar said he and his five employees see people every day who have Internet fatigue. They are simply overwhelmed by the options that never get them anywhere. There is little differentiation when everyone is competing on price.

“Now there is a lot of evidence that customers who want service are more than happy to go to a travel agency, sit down and talk about what they want to do — have somebody who has been there, rather than just clicking buttons and going through multiple pages,” he said.

The concierge approach to travel, especially in today’s adventure mentality, is what sets a travel service apart. In other words, if you want a vanilla, cookie-cutter cruise to Alaska, then you can go online or to Costco and buy that.

But if you want a custom trip with multiple legs and a locals-only experience, then you will want to talk to a savvy travel agent.

“The key thing from my perspective, when you talk to a travel agent, you’re hopefully dealing with somebody who knows what they’re talking about,” Sabar said. “That’s valid for any level of skills across industries, whether you’re talking about a plumber or mechanic. If they know how to deal with your issue, they will come up with a good solution for you.”

Not only will they come up with a plan, they may be able to get you extras on the side.

“A travel agent might be able to get the breakfast and the transfer included because of a relationship with a specific hotel,” Sabar said. “We are able to not only get them a competitive rate, an upgrade possibility, an early check-in, a late check-out, breakfast for two included and a $100 in credit towards anything they want to do at the hotel — which an online site is not really interested in offering. They are just competing against each other on that one number.”

Sabar’s experience is supported by data from the U.S. Department of Labor, which points out that while overall travel agency employment has declined over the last 10 years, strong interest in certain types of agency services remains.

“Clients who want customized travel experiences, such as adventure tours, will continue to require the expertise of agents,” according to its Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Sabar said multigenerational family vacations are popular because families prefer to have a single point of contact for all activities. Corporate travel and events also benefit from an agency.

Finally, special once-in-a-lifetime vacations — African safaris and trips to exotic locations — require the expert services of travel agents and extended vendors.

“We’ve had Vietnam vets going back to Vietnam for a while now, taking their kids, maybe grandkids, saying, ‘This is where grandpa served,’” Sabar said.

Sometimes they want to take boat rides up certain remote rivers. Other times, they want to get married on a specific mountain or beach. With alliances across the world, a good travel agent can usually make it happen.

“We have a client who wants to do this safari in Botswana or wants to go see — and live by — the gorillas in Rwanda,” he said. “Those are unique touches that we can reach out to somebody and say, these are specific things we want done, and it can be done.”

Nowadays, it’s rare to find real service. The tailored life is about distinction, but it doesn’t have to be overly expensive. Unfortunately, many people want cheap, not bespoke.

Perhaps as a nod to old-school service, on one wall of the Laguna Travel Service are more than a dozen faded airline stickers: Pan Am, Western Airlines, National Airlines, British European Airways and many others. All of the airlines are gone now, bought out by larger players.

They all had their time and place, but what was consistent with all of them was their growth as small airlines and dedication to their market. They invariably offered some kind of specialized service. Western Airlines’ motto was “The Only Way to Fly.”

And on some level, travel agents still cling to that desire.

They rely on our discernment, our quest for something better and our hope that it still exists.

DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at hansen.dave@gmail.com.