I am with Snoweman on this one. If there is one thing I know its traveling. Obviously aside for this year my life is Allways At The Airport I call it AATA haha. I do contracting work that has be flying all over the world, and my personal hobby aside from diving is traveling. I usually sit on about 60-80 airplanes a year and fill up a 50pg passport in about 2-3 years so far I have been to 98 different countries. So I would say I have a little bit of experience traveling and in this time I never use a travel agent (with the exception of when I went to Bhutan, but this is a government regulation that you have to use a local TA) Why because I have never found them to be cheaper. Think about it what is a travel agency? its a service/business to streamline your bookings and holiday. A service like this is not free so of course your paying for it and yes they are good at hiding it to make it seems like your not but trust me somewhere is the background your paying for it. I have 2 friends that work for travel agencies. Just like any other agency that provides a services they are in the business to make money off of people that don't want to spend the time booking things. Now yes if I was rich and had the money i would use a TA all the time! I would love to have the money to be able to wave my hand in the air and poof everything is done for me but im not rich and im not going to spend my money on that I would rather spend it on diving tips or other holidays.
Also those of you that work for a large company that has there employees flying a lot I bet your company does not use a TA they most likely use American Express travel and no this not a TA its just an online system with flight access but your company is still finding the flights and booking them on there own. There is a reason why companies just book flights themselves because they want to save money. If TA's were so cheep then why are all companies not using them? Reason is they cost more especially if you are flying hundreds of employees around the world all the time that extra the TA charges would add up really quick when you are flying that many people all the time.
I'm sure we all know the typical story of the university kid that just graduated and goes on a backpacking trip around the world for a year or two. Especially with youtube and social media it has become a very popular thing to do. These kids latterly find the cheapest way to travel. Trust me you don't see any of them using a TA. Why do you think this is? Because it cost more.
Yes I do agree there are some advantages of a TA, if your someone that is not comfortable traveling or maybe its your first trip overseas or maybe you just do one or two holidays a year then yes maybe its worth spending the one time extra $300-500 more to use a TA and just call someone up and tell them what you want and they they organize everything. I can understand that but if your like me and or others that are taking 10, 20, 30 or more trips a year then they $300-$500 extra is now thousands if not tens of thousands you have wasted hence why large companies book there own flights. The only other time a TA comes in handy is I have found that in some 3rd world countries when you are trying to get to a very remote location using a local domestic airline that does not even have a website or if they do it only takes local credit cards then yes sometimes you to find a local agent to book the ticket for you but usually you are only paying like a 10-20% markup on a very cheap $40 flight so its nothing in the grand scheme of things. I have had to do this a couple times in Nepal, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Angola, and Philippines.