Round-the-world tickets

There is nothing interesting about round-the-world tickets anymore. Melbourne travel agents are a united chorus about how airlines calculate fares on distance rather than demand and how the Internet has killed their profit margins. Their first quote is their last, in practice.

I go with STA Travel because Phil's system lets him give me an extra flight in North America. No-one notices the error until I’ve paid. Phil emails me to say ‘this has caused quite a stir in our Air Product loading department and a fair few headaches for myself’, and as I wonder if air product loading just means tickets, and if Phil’s headache is bad, I see he has changed my flight to Toronto. It now leaves San Francisco at midnight, four hours earlier than his original flight, which saves me $100 on an airport hotel. ‘I hope this doesn’t cause you any inconvenience,’ he says.

‘So far so good,’ I think.

Phil’s office has eight counters and three staff. The smurf-blue pouffes are so low I have to rest my elbows on the counter to see over it. And Phil is unexpectedly chirpy for someone with a deep English voice. He shaves to his collar because the hair he has lost from his head is growing out thick and black from the top of his shirt. He is helpful and friendly, at times vivacious, and he finds me the cheapest deals, but when I get up to go he stays seated and shakes hands with his palm down. I genuflect slightly to grasp it and my hand shrivels.

The new flight is with Delta Airlines with a connection in Cincinnati. I look up the popular online review site SkyTRAX. Delta scores very badly. Every American airline scores very badly, but the big problems with Delta are late flights and lost luggage. And the problem for me is that I have just thirty minutes to make the connection. I imagine myself in Toronto with no luggage waiting for the airline to find it and put it on their next late plane, or in Cincinnati with my backpack circling the luggage belt in Toronto until someone decides it’s abandoned and destroys it.

I go online and see a US Airways flight that leaves San Francisco at the same time as Delta, but with a two-hour layover in Philadelphia. The fare is $250 and this makes me think travel agents don’t make big margins and that Phil really did have a headache. Within an hour Phil books me on it. My flights are done.

The point is that Phil is worth it. Sure, I get lucky with the tickets and it’s me who finds the best flight to Toronto, but Phil has no problem with the changes and he does other good things. He tells me what I can expect at the US immigration desk - retinal scans and finger prints. He gets me tours with Intrepid Travel cheaper than the Intrepid office quotes me, and it’s this experience that makes me want to get his advice and buy my Eurail tickets through him, which I do.

Plus, I can see he is genuinely more excited about the trip than I am and he helps me go on the holiday I want. I told one friend I am going to Slovenia and the first thing he said was ‘you should go to Croatia.’

Getting a global ticket might be dull these days, but it’s worth using a good agent to make it so.