What is a Travel Advisor?
A Travel Advisor is best thought of as your Personal Travel Planner. We all have that friend who travels everywhere and is the "Go To" for any Travel Advice, well now imagine if they were actually an industry insider, with access to the best pricing and amazing travel perks, who can actually book travel and find you the best locations and best experiences possible.
From booking entire trips, that you simply need to turn up for, to just helping out getting better hotel rates or perks, we are a one-stop shop to help you plan your dream holiday to the States.
Aren’t Travel Agents “Dead”
When the internet came along, it opened up so much of the Travel industry to individual people. We all became our own travel agents, who could access flight information and hotel booking quickly and easily, often at the best price as these sites competed to get the price as LOW as possible. For so many of us, this is great. We suddenly had the freedom and flexibility to really travel wherever we wanted. This led to the inevitable narrative that Travel Agents Were Dead, a thing of the past, replaced by "booking.com" and "Expedia"
However, like most media hyperbole it only has a partial element of truth. You see this freedom comes at a price, and that is booking trips now can be very time-consuming and fraught with worry and what-ifs. Is that hotel ok? What area do we need to stay in? Can we walk to x from y? along with a million other questions and concerns. These questions now fill up Travel Forums and groups and have spawned a million travel blogs (including ours).
So while the Internet has taken a large toll on travel agents, people are starting to be drawn back more and more. However, these hard-hit companies focus their offering on just a handful of popular destinations. You can bag amazing packages to a variety of locations, such as Spain, Turkey, Croatia, Orlando, etc... but what we hear time and time again is the issues and complexities travelers face when visiting the less well serviced destinations. Here the huge reduction in service numbers has meant your only real option when planning a trip to these locations is the DIY route, and while this suits many travelers, many more want a more organised trip, without having to wade through a thousand hotel reviews to try and work out which hotels will leave you riddled with bed bugs and which won't...
We set up USA Travel Advisors for this very purpose, to fill the void and help you plan that perfect trip. Travel Agents are not dead, but they were hard hit, but recovering, and their partial demise has left huge gaps in the market, where customers are screaming out for help in getting to the less well-traveled part of the world. Certain USA destinations are our Absolute Bread And Butter, which we visit every year and have for decades, so we are perfectly placed to help you realise that dream
What is Fora?
Can’t We Just Use AI to plan our trip?
Sure you can, but good luck. And we don't mean that in a snarky way. It is perfectly possible to plan an amazing trip without using us. We encourage people every day to plan their trips themselves and utilise the many systems out there to plan a super memorable once-in-a-lifetime trip. Our whole Travel Blog Concept was designed to aid exactly that. But AI has come along a pretty much ruined it all.
Robots don't travel. Robots don't understand what they are saying. They are simply putting words together that they "think" make sense. And it often seems like they do. Ask AI for a daily itinerary for a 5-Day New York Trip and it will spit out what appears to be a fantastic set of sightseeing instructions, at least for the uninitiated. But those who know, see instantly the utter garbage that has just poured forth.
These intinary never make sense. Hours can be given over to a 5-minute item. We once saw it recommend an afternoon strolling Bryant Park (half the size of a football field, you could do 100 laps in an afternoon). They regularly recommend an hour or two for an all-day attraction such as the Met, and then have you traveling halfway across the city for 2 hours looking at a statue, before heading back across the city for an ill-timed observation deck, then back again for dinner at a chain restaurant.
The takeaway here is these itineraries need a human touch. And preferably one that had been there and done it. We visit these destinations regularly and have made the mistakes. We know the pitfalls, as we have fallen into them. AI can be used as a starter, but it is so bad at planning trips we really wonder why the masses have not yet cottoned on to just how bad it is...they are starting to quickly as we see less and less of this nonsense.
Who Are You?
What Perks Do You Offer?
You may hear us mention perks quite often. This is neat little selling point we offer, and they really can make a huge difference to your stay. As we are a member of Fora, we have access to a range of perks that can be offered at certain hotels and locations across the globe. We do not get to choose where these are offered, but if you choose one of our prefferd partners that can be added free of charge, sometime at an even better rate than budget booking platforms.
Even if you are plannig on booking your trip yourself it's always worth dropping us a line to see if we can beat your best hotel price and offering.
There are several offers open to us for our preffered partenrs and these include:
FREE Breakfast - every mornig of your stay
FREE Room Upgrade - Subject to Avaibility
FREE Resort Credit - Often $100 to spend on food and drinks in your hotel, Per Stay
FREE Early Check-in - Subject to Avaibility
FREE Late Check-out - Subject to Avaibility
One our top-rated partners we offer ALL of the above for your stay, for some hotels it's more limited and for some options we do not have perks open to us, but we can get some really competitive pricein and...
Better Service All-Round
It is well known industy knowlege that hotels HATE online booking sites. We have used these for decades now and used to scour the interent to snaffle the best price and we always got terrible service. Short and snappy check-ins, the worst rooms in the hotel, noting extra or added on, precise check-in and out times. We had booked using the cehapest possible method and were treated as such. When we moved over to booking useing preffered partner portls and with Fora, things changed. We often got amazing upgrades, free credits, welcome amminites, late check-outs, preffered queus and even access to guest lounges and VIP services. We were not paying much more, infact sometimes less and with the benifits added on, alot less.
Our service gives you access to a whole range of these perks, and benifits and as a preffered customer you will always be treated as a VIP rather than sneered at as just another tight-wad using booking.com to short change them.
Can You Book Flights?
We can, but we try not to, for a simple reason...Airlines mess up
Unlike Hotels, when an Airline messes up, having us in your corner will not help...not in the slightest as far as the airline goes. They do not give two hoots we are official Fora Advisors and infact they will simply ignore us. The truth is this is true for pretty much every Travel Agent, even TUI Agents Flying in TUI Airlines will have very little sway over the actual Airlines.
As such we find the absolute best-case scenario is if you booked the flight yourself, directly with the airline you are flying on. Online Travel Agents are a recipe for Disaster.
This does not mean we cannot help, we just prefer not to be inserted as a middleman as it only complicates matters.
As part of your planning finding the best flights is something we definitely can help with. Getting you one the best Airline, to the right airport, for the best price, at the most convenient time (along with a little insider guidance on getting that coveted upgrade) is kind of what we do daily. We are obsessed with flying and aviation and have flown all the top airlines to all the destinations we cover many times, we run a YouTube Channel where we regularly review these flights and know the industry inside out. We can definitely help with the flight bookings, going as far as finding the exact flight that's best for you, it's just a bit easier all around if you book it. We are giving up the opportunity to make a commission here, so you should see it really is in your best interest.
And if it goes wrong? Again we are not in a position to intervene directly, but as one of our clients, we are in your corner. We can't head out into the ring and slug the airlines for you directly, but we can offer the best advice on what punches to throw. We know the LAW and your rights as well as anyone and we are there to offer direct advice on what to do if things go wrong to ensure you are protected, you get the right compensation, and are delivered to where you are meant to be as quickly as possible.
We do not want to scare you, as 99.9% of the time there are no serious issues, and by taking our booking advice we will never put you on a flight that is risky with low connection times or with dodgy Online Travel Agents.
We also offer personalised ESTA and VISA advice along with other Travel and Destination tips to really help you get the best out of your trip. We also do Mobile Data Advice, Packing tips, Weather, and even Photography Tips!
As long as you are using us for some part of your trip, we are happy to offer all the advice you could ever need...really we are just travel nerds, and stopping us from giving advice is the hard part...
