When airspace shuts, flight paths change and travellers start wondering whether their long-haul trip is about to unravel, the value of a good travel agent becomes obvious. But what makes a good travel agent? We hear a lot about experience and support. In a market of moving airfares, splintered inclusions and airline systems most travellers cannot read, is that enough?
That is the pressure Complex Travel Group Managing Director Mark Trim sees building on both sides of the booking desk. Travellers are more exposed to fares they cannot properly interrogate. Agents are more exposed when service without airfare skill is no longer enough. The gap between booking a fare and understanding one is getting harder to hide.
For consumers, the fare on screen may not be the fare they can actually buy. For agents, the old promise of service is being tested by something less forgiving: technical skill.
The hidden stories behind the fare
“We see travellers are playing a game without knowing the rules,” Trim told media in Sydney last night.
Those rules are no longer sitting neatly in front of the traveller. They are buried in fare families, aircraft types, booking classes, cached search results, dynamic pricing and inclusions that can disappear behind a cheaper headline price.
“Several major airlines are now using NDC (New Distribution Capability) to implement continuous, dynamic pricing,” Trim said.
“What was once a tiered system of around 15 economy price points is now unlimited, meaning prices shift based on search behaviour, device, and browsing history.
“If you don’t proceed with a booking in that moment or session, perhaps 10 minutes, then the seats don’t necessarily drop back into the market immediately like they once did. Savvy travellers are seeing this, which erodes trust and brand loyalty from these opportunistic airlines.”
He said cached results on OTAs and metasearch engines such as Skyscanner and Kayak can be “hours or even days old”, leaving consumers to select a fare only to find it is unavailable or more expensive than first shown.
“This is a major driver behind Complex Travel Group’s 30–40% year-on-year growth, because people are frustrated and are losing trust in what they’re seeing online,” he said.
What travellers think they are buying
A traveller sees a business class fare online. It looks sharp. Then they click through. The price has changed. The seat has disappeared. The fare still exists, but the rules have moved. Or it was never really there in the first place.
Business class itself has become harder to read. A cabin name no longer tells the full story. Lounge access, seat selection, refundability and baggage can all vary by airline, route and branded fare tier.
“Airlines have spent years quietly stripping out what were once standard inclusions to keep headline prices looking competitive, while making up the difference through add-ons,” Trim said.
That is the trap in the modern airfare market. The fare that looks cheaper may only look cheaper because part of the product has been removed.
Travellers can now pay thousands for business class and still arrive at the airport without lounge access because it was not included in the fare type they bought.
“What makes this particularly frustrating is that airlines have deliberately structured the buying process to hold back that upsell conversation until checkout, once the traveller has already committed emotionally to the purchase,” Trim said.
By then, many travellers do not go back and rethink the booking. They pay the extra fee, absorb the frustration and remember the airline that made them feel caught.
A good agent flags those rules before the client falls in love with the fare.
The agent question no one wants to ask
Travel agents should be having a moment. Disruption makes the value of human support easy to see. So does an airfare market that behaves less like a fixed price list and more like a stock exchange.
But the moment also raises a harder question for the trade: are all agents equipped for the work now being asked of them?
Trim started in travel at 20 with Flight Centre before launching RoundAbout Travel in August 2008, two weeks before the Global Financial Crisis hit. The timing was rough. The niche was clear: round-the-world airfares, complex routings and the kind of airfare construction that demands more than a booking engine.
That work became the foundation for Complex Travel Group, now a multi-brand travel business with more than 85 staff across Australia and New Zealand.
“I love airfares,” he said. “I’m an airfare nerd.”
Post-COVID, Trim said many agents moved further away from deep airfare work and toward simpler retail systems.
Point-and-click tools have a place. They can process straightforward bookings. They can surface options. They can keep a sale moving.
They are not the same as knowing how to interrogate inventory, read booking classes, understand fare construction and identify when a cheap-looking option is setting a client up for trouble.
For a short domestic trip, the difference may barely show. For a premium long-haul itinerary, a multi-stop journey, a cruise-linked airfare or a business class booking into Europe, it can matter quickly.
When service is not enough
The industry has spent years polishing the language around advice. Travel agents became travel advisors. Service became support. Experience became reassurance.
Trim is not sentimental about the label.
“I’m not a travel advisor. I’m a travel agent,” he said. “If you say you’re an advisor, you give advice and then they go and book it themselves.”
The distinction is practical. A traveller does not only need someone to reassure them when something breaks. They need someone who reduces the chances of it breaking in the first place.
A good agent knows when a connection is too tight. They know when a branded fare removes something the client assumes is included. They know when an aircraft swap changes the seat. They know when a routing is better value because it solves the whole trip, not because it wins on the first visible price.
“Expert agents can bring these different rules into the forefront of conversations, rather than being an afterthought,” Trim said.
That is where the gap opens. The agent who understands air can have the hard conversation before payment. The agent who only sees the same fare tile as the traveller may not know there is a catch until the customer does.
Why specialists are pulling ahead
Complex Travel Group has built its business around specialist brands rather than a broad “we do everything” promise. Its brands include RoundAbout Travel, QFlyer, Flat Beds, Flat Beds Tour + Cruise and The Well Connected Traveller.
Each is built around a specific problem: round-the-world fares, frequent flyer strategy, business class, tour and cruise air packaging, and points travel.
Trim’s view is blunt.
“A jack of all trades travel agent that says experts in everywhere or words like that is just lying to you,” he said.
It is a line likely to make parts of the industry wince. It also speaks directly to where the market is moving.
The more complicated travel becomes, the weaker the generalist promise looks. Consumers are not only asking where they should go. They are asking whether the fare they found is real, whether the airline product is the one they think it is, whether their $9,000 ticket includes the basics, whether a cheaper routing is worth the risk and whether they should book now or wait.
The new value of a travel agent
The best agents are not selling the dream. They are solving the problem between the dream and the boarding pass.
According to Trim, demand for travel over the next six months remains strong, but better-value fare supply is thin. Australians still want Europe, but getting them there now takes more creativity.
“People are happy to accept extra stopovers or less familiar airlines to make it happen at better prices,” he said.
That may mean Turkish Airlines, Oman Air, Vietnam Airlines, Asiana or Korean Air instead of the more familiar Asian gateway options that are heavily sold or inflated for the coming Northern summer.
The point is not that one airline is always the answer. It is that the answer changes.
“What works this week can be completely different to next week, and real-time expertise is everything,” Trim said.
That is the part consumers rarely see. The value of an agent is not always in a dramatic rescue. Sometimes it is the routing they did not recommend. The fare they told a client to avoid. The seat map they checked. The rule they raised before payment. The refund condition they knew would matter.
“A good agent doesn’t just present data,” Trim said. “They understand the emotional weight of a big travel decision and help clients make the right call at the right time.”
The trust gap will not close by itself
Online booking is not going away. AI is not going away. Metasearch is not going away. Travellers will keep searching, comparing and screenshotting fares before they call anyone.
But the more the market fragments, the more those screenshots need interpretation.
Travel agents have long argued they save clients time and stress. In 2026, that claim needs sharper proof. The agents who can show what is happening behind the fare will have it. The agents who cannot may find themselves competing with the same screen their customer already opened at home.
“There’s no ‘one size fits all’ approach, which is making booking with a true expert more valuable than ever,” Trim said.
The uncomfortable part for the trade is also the clearest opportunity. Rising airfare complexity will not make every agent more valuable. It will make the right agents harder to replace.
