Today, so many travel agencies hire non-skilled staff in a need-to-be highly skilled travel industry. Grant Morris's philosophy; give your clients access to highly skilled, knowledgeable travel planners and they will keep coming back. Travel is our livelihood. It's not a hobby!

"Our Travel Professionals are not order takers but fulfiller of dreams. We create the perfect vacations for our clients using our knowledge, skill and imagination", says Grant Morris, President. "This is why we are the areas #1 cruise vacation agency".

Grant Morris is committed to the community by providing sponsorships to Courtice Soccer and other sports and community groups.

Of course Grant Morris CRUISE and TRAVEL offers more that great cruise vacations, listed below are some of the services we offer:

• Corporate Travel Planning
• Group Specials
• Honeymoon Specials
• Scuba "Cruise" and Scuba "Land" Specialty Groups
• Weddings Away

and much, much more...

With all of today's focus on the Internet, you may well have forgotten that using a travel agent may still be the best way to arrange air tickets, hotel accommodations, rental cars, cruises, tours, and other travel services. Although you might pay a few dollars extra, an agent's professional assistance can often save you a lot of time and keep your costs to a minimum. And if things go wrong, you can't beat the assistance of a travel agent in setting them right again.

This column's topic was suggested by a request from the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) to assist in judging entries in a competition for the agent who best exemplified the idea of "going the extra mile" for a client. The examples I reviewed were real eye-openers—true stories of travel agents who went to extraordinary lengths to help someone out of a jam. As you might expect, most of the cases were focused on solving unexpected problems—difficulties that arose when the clients were running out of time to find solutions. Whether making multiple calls to airlines, cruise lines, and tour operators, or running to airports with key documents, or organizing last-minute passports and visas, those agents exemplified the best in professional assistance.

What kind of specialized help can an agent provide? I see several important areas.

Access to the best deals

These days, travel agents have access to the best deals no matter where they're posted. Certainly, good agents know what's available through the same Internet sites you might visit on your own. In addition, agents can search their computer reservation systems, not available to the public, for deals that might not be on the Internet. And, agents are constantly bombarded with special promotions from cruise lines and tour operators that might or might not be available online.

Destination knowledge

Whenever a reader e-mails a question such as "where are the best beaches in the Caribbean," my first reaction is to respond, "see a travel agent." I don't really specialize in destination reporting—I have enough trouble keeping up with changing prices, new buying options, and scams. But good travel agents do know destinations—and what they don't know first-hand they can find through databases designed for agency use.

Air ticketing tricks

The Internet is easy for buying a simple one-way or round-trip ticket. But if you're traveling overseas, the air ticketing rules are often arcane. A good travel agent knows ticketing tricks—when to price a ticket in a foreign country rather than U.S. dollars, finding fares that allow stopovers, and such—that you could never find online. You may not need such expertise often, but when you do, it's invaluable.

Upgrades

Even when you buy the cheapest available cabin, a good cruise agent can sometimes swing a cabin upgrade; when you buy a minimum or "run of the house" hotel accommodation, a good agent can sometimes put you in an oceanview room. Agents cultivate relationships with major suppliers and they can often use those relationships to a client's advantage.

Time saving

How often have you spent two or three hours online, searching for a hotel deal or an airfare? Unless your time has very little value, you could achieve the same result in a five-minute call to a travel agent.

Assistance in a pinch

I can't overemphasize the importance of a travel agent's ability to extricate you from what looks like a very difficult problem. I've seen dozens of cases, and I have no doubt I could find hundreds or even thousands. Sure, serious difficulties probably don't hit you very often. But when one does, you really want an agent working for you.

I'm often asked, "How do I find a good travel agent?" My answer is, "The same way you find a good accountant, stockbroker, plumber, or auto mechanic—word of mouth." A travel agent is a professional, just as those others are professionals, and the best way to find one is through other satisfied clients.