Two mini-breaks combined

[AJI]

Can anyone reccommend a travel agent that is able to go about producing a 'package' for a customer designed holiday?

I've been to Thomas Cook and they can't help with my particular plans.

My holiday idea is combining two mini breaks together. One being a city break to Berlin and the other being a beach location on the Algarve.
3 nights at each location and the 7th day being flying home to England.

The issue with Thomas Cook is that they said straight away the problem would be the flight between Berlin and the Algarve and that it would be something they'd be unable to organise.

I'm just wondering if its worth bothering with other UK travel agents or are they all going to be like this?

[MitchT]

We did Osnabruck and Amsterdam last year and just sorted it all ourselves. It wouldn't even have occurred to me to go to an agent for something like that. I suppose if you were doing two mini breaks offered by the same agent you could see if they could knock off the return flight for the first break and the outward flight for the second break and then arrange your own flight between the two breaks, but I imagine they'll start telling you that the breaks are sold as fixed packages and that their duty of care to you while you're on their break means they can't remove part of it. I suspect you're up against a 'computer says no' type situation.

[ChrisBMW]

http://www.trailfinders.com/

A friend of mine used these guys when organising a complex trip in the far east with a lot of connections and he highly recommends them, he said everything went like clock work.

[ewenm]

In this internet-age, I'd sort it all myself, unless the agent was offering a special deal that I couldn't get close to. I can't remember the last time I used a travel agent to book a complete holiday.

[AJI]

ChrisBMW said:

http://www.trailfinders.com/

A friend of mine used these guys when organising a complex trip in the far east with a lot of connections and he highly recommends them, he said everything went like clock work.

Was on the phone to these guys yesterday... very helpful with respect to doing what they could do and also being honest that my holiday idea was maybe an expensive way to do things.
The main issue being that all flights are one-way and as such end up not being good value for money when you consider that return flights are usually not all that more expensive.
So in effect we would end up paying over the odds on flight costs. Something that I hadn't actually realised until they said it.

I was thinking that holiday agents could actually get some sort of deals worked out when 'linking' flights together for a package holiday. They were very honest in saying that 'yes' some agents can on certain routes but on my 'designer' holiday it would not be possible.

So my holiday will now be split in to two separate entities. Decided on Berlin in May and then the Algarve later in the year.
Both now being a day or two longer

I think I will go back to this travel agent as they were honest and eager to help.