| Comment | The only real benefit travel agents had was that they had access to flight/hotel databases before you could find it on the internet. They really didn't offer anything special.
As an example, back in 1998 I was planning a trip to Australia and because I had plenty of time the travel agent offered me a free stopover somewhere in South-East Asia. Having never been further than France before, knowing fuck all about the world, I asked them what they would recommend, and they booked me a stopover in Jakarta, and I trusted them cos you know travel agents should know about what's good, it's their job
[That turned out to be a fun trip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1998_riots_of_Indonesia) |
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