7 Vacation Splurges Travel Experts Swear By

The term “travel agent” evokes a different time. A time, perhaps, when people still smoked on planes. A time when, for better or worse, we did not rely on the TikTok masses to clue us in on every “must-visit” spot at our various vacation locales.

But the travel expert industry has seen a resurgence in recent years. When travel requirements and restrictions changed at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, people turned to travel agents to help them navigate their new normal . Travelers are also turning to the experts to help comb through all the noise on social media to find the meals worth eating, activities worth doing and experiences worth having. As adept at scrolling we might be, there are plenty of things that are best left to the professionals, especially when it comes to those big, potentially once-in-a-lifetime trips.

So, whether you’re planning a dream vacation, or merely dreaming of it, you might want to bookmark the below splurges travel experts swear by:

Child care

For people with families, this is a big one that’s worth the splurge, according to Henley Vazquez , CEO of Fora , which bills itself as “the modern travel agency.”

“People pull back on staying at an expensive hotel, and then end up spending a lot of money on a kid’s club,” she told HuffPost. “Many hotels with kid’s clubs have child care available for all ages, and will keep your kids occupied all day, for free, while you’re staying there. It’s an added cost, but for families, you could end up coming out ahead.”

Getting off the grid

For some, the best splurge is picking the destination itself. Mary Cropper, Travel Expert at Black Tomato , calls remote vacations “truly worth the splurge.”

“ A cruise through the Arctic, a chartered boat in