We’ve historically booked our own travel but a friend suggested Cook. 1. Our agent was pushy from the start. It’s on me to not have walked away before executing, but we tried it out anyway assuming we’d get better pricing than we could get. This wasn’t the case as we found better pricing on two occasions for similar major carrier flights subsequent to us locking our tickets down and on direct flight options. 2. We had to pay $50/kid to book their non-business tickets. He didn’t get seat assignments for the kids and said we’d get them at the airport. Our kids are 17, 15 and 13 and we didn’t want to risk the integrity of the trip so we ended up locking down the seats ourselves for an additional premium 3. He misspelled my wife's name on the booking. We pointed it out at the initial confirmation and he assured us he would change it. It wasn’t until several months later when we received an itinerary change from the airline – about which we were not informed by our agent – and noticed her name was still misspelled. When we brought it up to him, he acted frustrated and said it was not a big deal to the airline but begrudgingly fixed it. Evidently, this required a new reservation which made it impossible for my wife to select her meal for her flights because the password and reservation number we had were connected only to my ticket and those of our kids and we could/would not get this information from our agent or Cook. 4. The aforementioned convinced us to never use Cook again, but the biggest issue was the following. Our agent booked our return on Delta but carried by air France. We didn’t find out until we were trying to board the plane out of Paris that Air France would require an EU 130 (~$150) fee to ‘escort’ our 13 year old onto the plane because he was tied to only one adult’s reservation, mine, and i was not sitting in coach. It seems to me Air France should have billed for this from the beginning so we could have made a decision as to whether we wanted to accept this or choose a different option. But it also seems to me that a professional travel agent/Cook should know the rules/requirements of family travel on a major carrier and one of its ‘airline partners.' As a result, we held up the entire plane (literally the last to board and delayed the plane by 15 minutes) and essentially had the entire return experience tainted. 5. I called and left a voicemail for our agent, then one at the general voicemail box - midweek/midday EST and no answer at either line - then sent a follow up email to the agent and the general email. It turns out our agent was no longer there, but also that no one seemed to take up his clients/work even though his email bounce indicated someone would follow up. I did get a response from someone to my general Cook mailbox email that was very contrite and assured me that they would do everything they could to rectify the situation - all I asked for was help to have the EU130 refunded - but it appears to be only lip service. I have since followed up twice and only gotten crickets. Trust me on this, don't waste your time using Cook (or probably any other travel agent for that matter) if you're doing something as simple as booking tickets. You'll get as good or better pricing on Kayak, etc. and you will have control of your destiny. Justin S.

Working with Katrina was a real pleasure. We had a somewhat complicated itinerary and Kat was very helpful in exploring all of the options and guiding us to the best solutions. We highly recommend working with Kat to book your flights. Bob L.

I am extremely disappointed with my experience working with Kausha Ghia at Cook Travel. While I did receive a discount on two business class tickets from the U.S. to New Zealand, the customer service throughout the process was frustrating and unprofessional. From the beginning, communication felt inattentive. Although I specifically asked if the tickets were changeable and was told they were, this turned out to be a much more complicated issue. I also requested travel insurance and received confirmation that it had been purchased—only to get an email from Kausha a week later asking if I still wanted it, which was confusing and concerning. Just before departure, I inquired about modifying the domestic portion of our return ticket within New Zealand so we could depart from a different city. I was told this was not possible, that I would need to purchase an entirely new ticket, and that the international flight was sold out. However, I had booked a third ticket for my father through another travel agent, who was able to make a similar domestic change for just $3. Ultimately, I had to contact Air New Zealand myself and have them send instructions to Cook Travel confirming the change was possible and giving her instructions on how to accomplish it. Only then did Kausha agree to make the change—and charged me $75 per person for something she initially insisted couldn’t be done. This experience was stressful and avoidable. Based on the poor communication, misinformation, and unnecessary costs, I cannot recommend Cook Travel or Kausha Ghia. I suggest looking elsewhere for a more reliable and professional travel planning experience.

Great service by Katrina - she was awesome to work with and found us a very good flight to Australia! We have since asked for her help on other trips, and she has consistently found us great deals on business class trips abroad. She is wonderful!

I was so pleased to find such a professional company to help make my travel reservations. They Researched a great route in what was a semi-complicated set of travel plans. I had not used Cook before and reached out to them after several futile efforts with other companies to put together an acceptable plan. I was particularly pleased that they minimized layovers. What seemed impossible for other companies all seemed so simple for them. A bonus was the marvelous staff member who worked with me.