Recently my fiancée and I were doing research on potential honeymoon destinations. After scouring the Internet for days, we decided to enlist the help of an experienced travel agent to recommend some locations we might want to consider for our trip. As you might imagine, many travel agencies have been suffering ever since the advent of sites like Expedia, Travelocity, and Hotels.com, but believe it or not, a few still remain in existence today, including national chain — Liberty Travel.

We called Liberty, and on a rainy Sunday night from the comfort of our living room were able to speak with an agent who helped us explore various options for our honeymoon. She recommended resorts that ranged from elegant to fast-paced & fun — for a tremendous discount if we booked through her.

We were liking what we saw and heard from her as we searched these resorts online for the next few days. But after reading reviews in more depth, we found that the very resort in Mexico that she claimed was the top destination, simply wasn’t. It was marred with negative reviews. Everything from the sub-par beach to the bad service — and, far worse — the lack of cleanliness at the resort — these complaints piled up wherever we looked.

I then discovered online that travel agencies like Liberty have deals set up with specific resorts and resort companies. In essence, they’re incentivized to lie about what “the best” possible resort choice is.

What is the point of a travel advisor if they can’t advise truthfully on the best places to travel?

After we had made a decision on a completely different resort, based on the feedback from another couple who recently stayed there, we gave Liberty another chance to see if there were any deals that they could book for us at our new choice. After the agent heard the name of the resort she immediately bashed it, and told us she’s “never sent anyone there before,” insinuating that it was beneath our expectations for our honeymoon.

Although many travel agencies are doing their best to, at the very least, match the best price you find online, it’s hard to come close to the deals that consumers can find on travel websites themselves. In the end, that is exactly what we did, went on Expedia and booked everything on our own.

Now, there are times to use an agent, like when planning for more luxurious, complicated, or rare trips. But for agencies with exclusivity contracts (with the wrong resorts) or a low luxury volume, how in 2012 are they still able to stay in business? It seems a lot of them are finally tapping into the success of Trip Advisor and trying to leverage (surprise, surprise) social media. But as technology continues to change, how do they expect to stay relevant moving forward? Will they simply rebrand (not recommended) or completely re-examine the way they do business?

What have you experienced on your journeys through the world of travel agencies?