Questions about booking on Opening Day with Costco

[FigmentSpark]

I guess I see many TAs serve a valuable service for travelers. If the TA is providing you with value then you should absolutely expect to pay extra for that. With the current system, TAs services have been completely marginalized and no one expects to pay for them. A great travel agent is worth their weight in gold.

A great travel agent is able to pick and choose their clients. The rest are still getting paid for a service to the merchant (Disney) in getting people to their ships/resorts. They haven't been marginalized. They are still valuable to the people who pay their bills... the merchants. If they had to rely on travellers to pay the bills, there would be undercutting and many, even good ones, would go out of business. The merchant would then lose that segment of consumer that those people used to sell to.

Just because you don't see them serving a purpose to the merchants, doesn't mean the merchant sees it that way. In fact, the merchant is willing to pay the TAs for their services, so enough business must flow through them to make it worth the big bucks. And even if DCL (or any of them) find fewer and fewer cheques going to TAs, they won't cut the price to you. They will mark it as new profit in their spreadsheet.

 

[Billinaz]

Sure but Costco is keep some % of the commission that Disney is paying to them. You are getting no added value out of using Costco. I would rather that Disney just lowered the price by 10% and eliminated all commissions. We could just all book direct with Disney.

They are not allowed to do that. DCL is strict with the pricing rules. I am getting more from Costco than I would get from any other TA. There is no benefit for me to use a TA at all.