Graziella5b

I travel often to Argentina and have found out that reputable local Travel Agencies are very helpful when traveling to that country. A friend had a confusing experience through another site and although Marga the person she was dealing through the internet seemed to be a real travel agent she was not . There is a way to check if you are dealing with a travel agency. It is not foolproof, I guess nothing is but it can be very useful. This is how it works:
All travel agencies in Argentina have a licence, and a number , called "numero de legajo". This number appears in
the lettersheads and emails of the agency as does the address . ALthough I do not know if it is mandatory to included the number .
To check if it corresponds to the agency you can go to
www.turismo.gov.ar.
There is an option for English, however the list of agencies is only in Spanish. So choose Spanish, then in the upper right side choose "Agencias de Viajes" and then choose "
Consultas sobre Agencias de Viajes Autorizadas" finally
choose "Agencia por Legajo Especifico",put in the number
of the agency and the information should come up.
I hope this helps, my friend was tempted by Marga 's offers only to be terribly dissapointed when she was cought up in the Aerolineas Argentinas strike and Marga was not able to help her at all. That is how she realized, a little too late, that she was not dealing with the real McCoy.

miss_saigon

Graziella5b,
I am Argentinean and 2 months ago I posted a note saying that tourists should stick to reputable travel agencies (like Furlong or Argentina Escapes). Unfortunately, the boom of tourism in Argentina has brought out a lot of cowboys who are in for a quick buck.

Graziella5b

Hi, miss saigon, I am glad you agree I would say that there are a lot of good reputable agencies out there, I guess you are mentioning 2 big ones but of course this is up to each person. I preferably like to go to small quaint hotels versus big ones and similarly in the past I have enjoyed dealing with Wow argentina which is smaller and offers custom made services. I guess this is up to each person. The important thing is to deal with
a bonded , licensed agency.

Worldismyoyster

This is helpful. It is hard to figure out who is reputable and who is not. We like tour operators who know the country as well because they often will take the time to make the trip special or offer more customized services, but don't always like the sense of not knowing if there is a real company on the other end of the phone/internet. Sounds like your friend Marga's problem justifies our concerns. We succesfully used tour operators in the Spain and Italy before traveling to Argentina. In both cases we used US companies who knew the countries well and had people in the country we were traveling to. In Argentina, we did the same thing and it worked really well. They were able to both pull together a great custom itinerary (very high end, but this was a special anniversary trip so we wanted to splurge and enjoy ourselves) based on their local knowledge while giving us the confidence to pay by credit card to a US business. Maybe not for everyone, but -- when you want to do it right -- we have found this kind of operator to be the match for us.

drdawggy

The two agencies that have received the most positive reviews over a period of several years, Cintia at WoWArgentina and Mayra@ argentinatravelservices.com I can vouch for both providers.