Recommended Travel Agents?

Honestly? I’d just do the research and booking yourself. I’ve done all the planning and booking for our 3 weeks in England, Scotland, and Ireland for next summer. I used TripAdvisor for a lot of the planning and booked everything directly from each hotel’s/tour’s websites so as to get the best deals. (I even scored first class airline tickets home for under $2k each). The hardest part will be navigating the different COVID restrictions. We ultimately took France off of our itinerary because it would have required too many tests.

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Wow! Yeah maybe I need to just sit down and look at what we want to do and maybe it won't be too complicated. I've never planned a trip before so it feels a little daunting just looking at it now.

Definitely worrying about covid restrictions, probably will delay our trip until next year for that as well as to hopefully get better deals since it'll be more in advance.

Smart to use Trip Advisor to look and then book direct! I'll definitely do that.

View Quoted Comment It’s definitely easier if you do fewer countries/different stays within countries, but if you’re organized, I promise it’s not as hard as it seems. Plan out a dream itinerary first, build in your travel days, then determine how much time you’d have available in each location. Research flight costs (it may be cheaper to fly in to one country versus another). Then figure out if what you want to do/see can be done in a hub for each country. Only after you’ve figured out your basic itinerary, should you book anything solid. If you’re not going until 2023, you’ll have plenty of time to research.

Travel agents do NOT charge you - they get paid through the hotels/cruise ships/vacation resorts that they book for you. We are using Gate1 travel ----- remember with all these COVID rules and restrictions, you will have to find testing sites on your own before you are allowed back in the USA. With escorted tours they take care of it all. Our 16 day Italy tour is $7,000 total and includes airfare!!!!!! Plus every breakfast, 2 lunches and I think 5 or 6 dinners. Doing the planning on your own may be fun, but you may actually wind up spending more, or making costly mistakes.