What do I lose by not booking flights through a travel agent?

In the UK, one major thing you lose by not using a travel agent is ATOL protection. This may not be relevant if you're not booking hotels though the agent (did you recieve an ATOL certificate?). But if you do and the airline goes bust while you're away ATOL will:

...make sure you can finish your trip and return home. If your holiday is booked but you have not yet left, you will usually receive a refund.

Source

Booking directly, you may lose all your money or have difficulty returning home. I'm not sure if similar schemes run in other countries.

The main advantage of ATOL protection over travel insurance:

• ATOL protection will cover you if your provider goes bust; many travel insurance policies don't include this.
• if you book with an ATOL accredited agent, ATOL will have completed due diligence against that agent - the idea being that it isn't about to fail imminently.
• If you book a holiday and the airline fails before you travel the ATOL-protected tour operator must make alternative flight arrangements for you. Often Travel Insurance will refund you the money but it will be down to you to book any alternatives, etc.

All ATOL Accredited agent must provide the above. There is a small additional cost that the agent must pay to ATOL (I think it's about 80p); this may or may not be passed on to the customer.

I can't list all possible things you might lose by not booking through travel agents, but I know one or two for sure, in regards to cheaper prices.

Airlines do sell seats in bulks, same as in manufacturers sell goods in bulk, these bulk seats will be cheaper and customers to these bulk seats are travel agents. This type of seats are called consolidated tickets. These seats are a win-win situation for both airlines and travel agents. For the airlines, these seats are sold and got paid for, whether the seats are resold by the travel agents or not, and for the travel agents, these seats are cheaper which will help them to attract more buyers, that's why you see some agents show prices cheaper than what is shown in the operators website or in another agent's pricelist. So even if you are sure you want to go using a specific airline, you might get a better price from a travel agent than what you might get from the operator itself.

Other possible thing you might lose is the "more options", and I am not talking about prices here. When you book through a travel agent, you will have more options from different airlines and you got to choose, some of these options might have nice transit cities in the middle, which might give you the chance to see other cities in the way to your destination, or possible other packaged deals which comes with a cheap tour offer or a cheap accommodation. These options are not available when you book directly from the airline's website, they will only show their own flights.

The biggest difference between doing it yourself on an airline's website and going through through a travel agent is less flexibility. The travel agent's reservation system shows them how many seats in each fare class, allowing them to build your booking flight by flight. The airline system uses algorithms that cover many possibilities, but not all.

So an experienced agent can perhaps build you an itinerary from A to B, that the airline algorithm isn't programmed for. But likely not at a better fare.

Consolidator fares and bulk fares are slowly becoming a thing of the past except for tour companies that package air & land. Most of these fares are no better than the best airfare that the airline offers to the public, but perhaps have more seats available per day.

Booking with a single airline puts the onus on them if a leg is delayed so long that you miss a connection.

If you book a journey on multiple airlines (eg to China and then within China can easily make a change of carriers a good choice) then if you make the bookings yourself separately you may not be covered for a missed leg in the case of a delay. Subject to certain limitations a travel agent is able to offer protection against such events. This may require that the airlines involved are involved in the same 'conference' such as eg Star alliance, but may not, and agents will usually (but not always) offer journeys where this protection does apply.

I once was almost a day late for an internal Australian QANTAS flight due to a China-Australia non-QANTAS delay. I had booked the last leg myself independently from the main journey and notionally lost the right to a new flight within Australia. On that occasion QANTAS kindly provided a 'free' replacement flight, but were not obliged to do so.

A few years ago (online) travel agents would pretty much always offer lower price than the airline on its website (e.g. British Airways). At some point it seemed to change though, and now many airlines (including BA), but by no chance all, make sure that their online prices are not worse than the agents. I am not sure what is American Airline's approach. Websites like Kayak allow you to compare prices in one place, because they index both main online agents as well as the airline's themselves.

Given that the price is the same, I don't think you loose anything by booking with the airline. A thing you definitely gain, is the lack of agent's fees when you want to change your booking. A few years ago I had a ticket booked with one of the online ones and I had to cancel it. The agent called the airline on my behalf and then charged me £25 per person fees on top of the fees of the airline. To make things more annoying, these fees are usually not covered by your travel insurance.

One thing that I get from a travel agent that I have yet to find from an airline website is ticket reservation without paying for it.

In other words, I want to hold a seat for me now, because I might be traveling on future date X; lets say its four days from now.

If tomorrow I decide to cancel my trip, I can cancel and then do the refund process through the airline's website - which then has to talk to my bank and there may be charges etc. etc.

However, with an agent - I just call him up and say "I changed my mind" and the will just cancel the booking, that's it - I don't lose anything because I haven't yet paid for the reservation.

I also cannot manage to book an "open ended" ticket through the airlines I fly (usually, Emirates) from their website. An open ended ticket is a two-way ticket with an open return date.

If you have a good relationship with an agent (you use the same one consistently), they can save you a lot of hassle and time when you need something urgent.

I once had to travel the same day (it was an emergency). I rushed the airport and stood in line at the check-in counter, and called my travel agent. By the time it was my turn at the queue, my ticket was waiting for me with the agent. He had also managed to secure me a hotel at my destination.

I always remind myself to throw some business to my travel agent, he isn't always the cheapest compared to booking direct with the airlines, but more than makes up for it in terms of service.

My answer is short and simple: when I tried to buy a ticket for my forthcoming flight on date X/Y/Z (other dates was less convenient) there was already no tickets by airline. However one of travel agents have one remaining ticket (with almost the same price). So sometimes travel agents can give you more possibilities.

Flight booking websites tend to push connecting flights via hub, even if there are also multiple direct flights between your airports.

For instance, check your favorite website trying to book a return flight between Zurich and Frankfurt. At least five direct flights daily are offered by Lufthansa alone, in both directions. However many booking sites will suggest connecting flights with long layovers instead. These may be cheaper than direct flight, but not very significantly, much less than the difference between Business and Economy classes, for instance.

As a result, if I know it should be a direct connection, I usually buy the exactly needed ticket from the airline directly.

I always book using online travel sites and on many occasions found them to be cheaper than booking directly on the airline website. On the downside, not all travel sites allow you to enter a FF number to claim miles. Also, some airline websites allow you to choose a seat right after booking.