In Reply to: Do lots of research BEFORE you book posted by jono on Saturday, 2. April 2005 at 10:34 Bali Time:
that you can rely on the advice of your travel agent. I know that some agents are well informed, but some neither know nor care.
Last trip, the hotel I wanted for the first six days was full, so the agent [who I was using for the first and last time] provisionally booked me into the Barong, a hotel of a totally different type and location to my first choice. Fortunately I knew enough about it to say "No way", but how about if this had been my first trip.
There's more good advice available on this Forum [and on links provided by Forumites] than you will get in all the standard brochures on the travel agents' racks put together. But when asking for advice on here, we need to be precise about what our requirements are. No good asking for a "good" hotel, or "good" restaurant etc. We need to say exactly what we are looking for and also what we want to avoid.