I have been fortunate in my life to have travelled to various parts of the world and experienced different countries, cultures, people, foods, sights, sounds, smells and everything else that travel has to bring. This has also meant dealing with a number of travel agents in that time but on the odd occasion it has been easy enough and cheaper to do everything online.

Last Christmas my family and I travelled to Zimbabwe and booked all of our flights and accommodation through Flight Centre Botany. The whole experience of organising our travel arrangements through them had to be the best I’ve have had with any travel agent. My reasons for this (in no particular order of importance) are as follows:

Product Knowledge

One thing that I find disappointing when making purchases is dealing with a sales associate who doesn’t have a good grasp of what they are selling. I was pleasantly surprised at Flight Centre because they were knowledgeable about the products and services they are selling. Besides giving the most convenient flight options, they also provided us with other alternatives. The alternative meant spending a bit more time in the air and stopovers in 3 countries but they did allow us to break up the journey, spend a couple of days at the destinations and still come in a little cheaper than options with the most direct routing for travel at that time of the year.

I have had experiences where I have had to be the one to tell an agent to look at various routes that could be an option and when the conversation comes to that, the only thing I want to do is kindly thank them for the time, walk out the door and go somewhere else.

Lowest Airfare Guarantee

As mentioned earlier, I will hunt around for a bargain before letting go of my hard earned cash. That said, I’m a proponent for scouring the web for deals because more often than not, you are bound to find a good deal on an online booking site. But, in situations where I’m travelling to Zimbabwe and making multiple stopovers on the way, I feel more comfortable dealing with a person in a brick and mortar store and someone I can easily contact for help with any travel related issues that may arise en-route.

That said, Flight Centre has a price beat guarantee so if I do find a fair that beats what they are offering they will beat. In my last interaction with them, they matched a fair I found online which meant a couple of hundred extra dollars per person of spending money for our stopovers.

Exceptional Customer Service

Attentive and friendly consultants who paid attention to and listened to our travel needs made the decision of giving them a considerable amount of money easier. They answered all of our questions, some of which were difficult and some which might have seemed silly to the best of their knowledge and if they didn’t know the answer, they set out to find it and got back to us with a quick phone call or via email.

To add to that, we paid for part of the travel using a 12 month interest free finance offer they were running. Unfortunately, this was not automatically applied to our account and we only realised it after we got back to NZ and when the offer had since expired. After explaining the situation to them, they did a considerable amount of leg work to find a solution and fortunately enough (for us), they we able to apply the interest free facility. That for me was them having gone above and beyond my expectations.

The list above isn’t extensive but the service we received was more than enough for me to not only go back to book our next getaway with them but to also recommend them to others.

So, if you are thinking of booking flights and accommodation and live close enough to Flight Centre Botany, I would recommend you visiting Paul, Hashika and the rest of them team to see what sort of a package they can put together for you.