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  • Travel/ticketing agent in Singapore

    Hi all,

    I am looking for a travel/ticketing agent that is based in Singapore. I work for a very small company where we make our travel arrangements by ourselves. Previously, most of my trips have been relatively simple round-trips, so it has been manageable making online reservations on my own. Now my itineraries are starting to get more complex, so I figure I may need the services of a travel agent. I haven't lived in Singapore for long and haven't gone to one here before. Does anyone here have any recommendations?

  • #2
    There are two largish agents that my company use: Carlson Wagonlit and Amex Travel. If you want personalized service, an agent who knows your travel pattern, I would recommend the smaller ones though. Let me know.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by CarbonMan View Post
      There are two largish agents that my company use: Carlson Wagonlit and Amex Travel. If you want personalized service, an agent who knows your travel pattern, I would recommend the smaller ones though. Let me know.
      Hi CarbonMan, thanks for your reply. Do such agents require a minimum volume, i.e. more than a certain number of trips per year? My work-related travel comprises roughly only 10-15 trips per year, and has to be in Economy. A personalized service would of course be great, but I suppose this amount of travel is relatively small business to most agents, so I don't expect them to want to provide a lot of service. I'm looking mainly for someone who will be able to put together multi-point itineraries and advise on fare classes (affordable fares that allow some degree of flexibility and mileage accrual).

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      • #4
        Originally posted by JetE View Post
        Hi CarbonMan, thanks for your reply. Do such agents require a minimum volume, i.e. more than a certain number of trips per year? My work-related travel comprises roughly only 10-15 trips per year, and has to be in Economy. A personalized service would of course be great, but I suppose this amount of travel is relatively small business to most agents, so I don't expect them to want to provide a lot of service. I'm looking mainly for someone who will be able to put together multi-point itineraries and advise on fare classes (affordable fares that allow some degree of flexibility and mileage accrual).
        The smaller agents would be able to do that, not the two I mentioned. But bear in mind that they may charge a few for every leg that you take if it's on another airline. CW charges $70 per airline/leg. Eg flying SIN-EWR-MCO will cost $140 return. All in SGD. It's worth it if you have a complex itinerary and do not have the time to go work it out yourself. Personally, being a control maniac, I tend to do the research myself and give it to them to issue the ticket.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by JetE View Post
          Hi all,

          I am looking for a travel/ticketing agent that is based in Singapore. I work for a very small company where we make our travel arrangements by ourselves. Previously, most of my trips have been relatively simple round-trips, so it has been manageable making online reservations on my own. Now my itineraries are starting to get more complex, so I figure I may need the services of a travel agent. I haven't lived in Singapore for long and haven't gone to one here before. Does anyone here have any recommendations?
          I'm at a small company too, we used to use Diners Travels, but their response have been very very slow (ie quotation comes in only after 3 days). I'm down to buying them from the airline directly for relatively simple itineraries and using Misa Travel (email quotation comes back by the next day) for the very complex ones. Though get prepared to pay some premium for the service, I got quoted almost S$300 more than what I can get from the UA call center, same fare class, same flights (relatively simple itinerary, roundtrip + one stopover, just in upgradeable fare class). I'd say, just email a few to see which one offers better service.

          Do share if you find a small agent willing to offer personalized service, with relatively cheap rates!

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          • #6
            I am using an agent for all my ticketing and they have also offer 24/7 support in case I am stuck somewhere in the world.

            Price wise, normally I do a dummy booking on the net and then ask them for a quotation, if the price is too much different, I will then send them a screen shot of the price I could get on from the airline and get them to re-quote.

            If you want the contact of the agent I use, send me a pm as I do not want to advertise fro them here.
            .
            .
            This is a computer generated message, no signature required....

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            • #7
              Thank you all for your input. There was a slight bit of panic when I found out yesterday that I had to be in Korea by tomorrow and then on to another Asian destination before coming home. Since this was at the (Europe-based) client's request and they would ultimately be the one paying for the tickets, I asked for help with the ticketing. They came back with a quote of over 2100 euros for an economy class itinerary! Even they themselves knew this was too much. So I had to find time to work on it last night by going to various airline sites. It took less work than I had imagined and I found an itinerary that would cost about 50% less than what their agent quoted. And that is with some legs on SQ, which I initially avoided as I expected them to be expensive. Lesson learned: last minute one-way segments booked through airline websites do not necessarily mean outrageous fares. Just a comment on the various sites: It seems the KE and OZ sites won't allow bookings for departures closer than 5 days out... what's the deal with that?

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              • #8
                My company uses CityState, we have dedicated team for our company (I do not think they are fully dedicated to us, but this group also serve other companies I think). They are quite efficient and turn around not quite bad, normally within few hours after I email them. Normally, our internal process that slow them down

                They have after office hour number to call. Also when my CX flight got moved, they did call me to inform me about the changes.
                visit my blog

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                • #9
                  I've had poor service with CityState not giving me information I requested including fare classes etc. I spelt out what I wanted, and they basically didn't take any of it into consideration. We've since moved on - I'll ask kapitan for his contact the next time we meet. Have done every booking subsequently required by myself, mostly direct with the airlines...

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                  • #10
                    There IS a TA on this board. I will leave it to him to decide if he wants to identify himself and be your TA.

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                    • #11
                      I find usually that agents in Singapore are not so good, plus they charge the 3% credit card fee and maybe $30-50 in service charge on top.......it gets a bit much.

                      Typically I book from airlines, even if i have to book different legs/one way/different carriers etc. to pull a full itenary together I could save several hundred dollars at least, plus I have access to the airline if anything goes wrong and all flights covered by travel insurance of the credit card used to pay the ticket.

                      A colleague from Germany is coming next month and their agent wants to charge an additional Euro500 only for changing the SIN-HKG sector from the 8:30am B777 to the 9:30am A380.... Cookoo.

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                      • #12
                        I generally find Corporate TAs in Singapore to be almost brainless and go by the book. They also tend to overcharge people who they think do not know better.

                        I'm a part time TA based in North America. My friend works for a corporate bank in Singapore and they have to book through them. Once when I looked at his simple airfare between LON and ZRH return, I was shocked to see the value of the ticket as $150 but yet the travel agent had the audacity to charge the full price of $900 just because they were corporate. When my friend asked about this, they were told that 'agents outside Singapore can get special fares only' - !
                        When I gave him my friend specific instructions on how to book said fares, they refused at first... but finally relented and lo and behold, the $150 came through. But then of course they tagged on a $150 service fee for doing the 'work'.

                        I used to work in Singapore as a TA - but that was in the mid 90s. And basically nothing has changed..... attitudes, mentality, arrogance. Mind you , the airlines in Singapore also work against the TA - blaming them for even schedule changes. Whereas in North America & Europe, airlines work in tandem with the agency. I have had numerous challenges with the airline companies in Singapore already. Worst of the lot is actually SQ !! Just because they are based in Singapore, and they know that many corporates must travel on SQ by government order, they really cannot care less. All they want is business, first class travel... and I had a company once who only travelled in economy and the SQ sales agents' attitude was that 'if the company is rich, then they can travel in business class.' That remark caused SQ to lose a $10 million travel deal. By then it was already too late. Do these make the newspapers? Of course not.

                        My suggestion is to find a small but courteous company. Forget the bigwigs. They are useless.
                        Last edited by Guy Betsy; 23 February 2012, 04:06 PM.

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                        • #13
                          TS, my current TA is quite good. Sends me a SMS to remind me the flights whenever I have late or morning flights. Charges me $60 per ticket (not per way), and for faster response, I whatsapp / SMS him when I need quick turnaround.

                          Generally, very helpful, but as he is a small outfit, not exactly 24/7 you would expect from a larger player. But if you need recommendations, let me know.
                          Life's A Bitch,
                          Love It

                          If GOD created me for only 1 reason. That reason would be to the love of my wife. If there was any other reasons involved, that would be for the love of Singapore Airlines

                          Flown with me? - http://my.flightmemory.com/inix

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by lingua101 View Post
                            My company uses CityState, we have dedicated team for our company (I do not think they are fully dedicated to us, but this group also serve other companies I think). They are quite efficient and turn around not quite bad, normally within few hours after I email them. Normally, our internal process that slow them down

                            They have after office hour number to call. Also when my CX flight got moved, they did call me to inform me about the changes.
                            As with Kyo, I've never been impressed with CS's service. My ex-company uses them exclusively and even with that huge a volume, they were still cr*p. Once had a booking with KL that they couldn't change... Got quite irritated and decided to call them myself. 5 mins later, all was settled.
                            God must have been a ship owner, he placed the raw materials far from where they are needed and covered two-thirds of the earth with water...

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                            • #15
                              There is a hierarchy in the chain of commands in travel agencies.. that you can't do anything without the manager's approval....

                              When I was working in Singapore at a TA, I had to then issue a ticket on Aeromexico which of course we had no representative here. I already knew what to do but to save face, I sheepishly had to ask the manager who said that he would get back to me.

                              6 days later, he said that SQ had no agreement with Aeromexico (that was in 1996) and that we could not issue the ticket... but I already did I told him. I had issued it against DL's ticketing plate. He said it cannot be done. And he still insisted that it cannot be done even when I showed him the proof that DL had already issued the ticket.

                              Ah well...

                              If can be, most of my friends would rather have me do their ticketing especially when it comes to innovative routings. That is something that Singapore agents lack.

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