On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 03:03:43PM -0700, tony mancill wrote: > On 08/22/2010 11:34 AM, Lars Wirzenius wrote: > > On su, 2010-08-22 at 14:23 +0200, Holger Levsen wrote: > >> I think it's totally reasonable to use our projects funds wisely. That is, if > >> you get or apply for travel sponsorship, to help looking for good prices. > > Given that finding good flight prices is hard, would it be worthwhile to > > get a travel agent to arrange transportation for everyone? A good agent > > might be able to find much better deals than most people, and might not > > be too expensive. > Although I'm sure people can present counter-examples for specific > instances, I suspect that using a travel agent would result in > cost-savings on average. If this were true, I would not expect travel agencies to be in a steady decline over the past decade as a result of on-line travel sites. Clint points out that corporate travel agencies typically have high per-transaction fees; this has been my experience as well; and it will generally be quite difficult to arrange this as group travel since there are so many distinct points of departure. I simply don't see any way that a travel agent is going to help. Maybe negotiating a group rate with a specific airline would be worth trying, but that also depends on having leverage; if we tell them we're all traveling to a city for which they're the undisputed preference, they have no incentive to give us a better rate because they're assured of having our business anyway. :) Skepticism aside, if someone thinks it's worth their time to look into working with a travel agent to find out what it would cost us and what it might save us, I have no objections. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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