How to reserve a trip with a Kansas City travel agent, from first question to written confirmation

Seven steps, in order, with nothing hidden in the middle of them. Three questions cut thirty-two weeks down to four. A week's own page gives the starting figure and says how much of that week you could have arranged alone. Six fields send a question, not a reservation.

The front door here is a question, not a list of thirty-two weeks

The short version of how to reserve a trip with a Kansas City travel agent is this: answer three questions, read one week's page, send six fields, wait while we ask the supplier, and take the supplier's written confirmation when it comes. Seven steps, and not one of them asks you for a card.

Step one is the fork. A catalog usually opens with a list and lets you scroll; this one opens with a single question, and the question is who else has to agree to your dates. Whichever way you answer, a second question follows, then a third, and the third differs depending on the route you took to reach it. One asks how many beds you are willing to learn in a week. Another asks whether there should be a town inside walking distance. Three questions in, thirty-two weeks have become four, and those four are in front of you.

Nobody has to be asked anything. The whole catalog also sits at /every-week/ as one flat list: thirty-two weeks, thirteen countries, starting figures from $1,890 to $3,760 per person. Readers who already know what they want go there first. Anyone who does not usually reaches four weeks faster by answering than by scrolling.

What a week's own page tells you, including the part that costs us work

Step two is reading one week properly. Each of the thirty-two has a page of its own: where it is, how many nights, what the starting figure covers and leaves out, and how the days fall. Prices are per person and they are starting figures. The final number is confirmed when the reservation is made, and it is the supplier's, not ours.

Every week also carries a number from one to four, printed on its own page, saying how much of that week you could have arranged without us. One means all of it. Two means most of it. Three means the difficult half needs a telephone call to somebody who answers to a name rather than to a form. Four means the week does not exist without an introduction. On the page it appears as a short line with breaks cut into it: none for a one, three for a four. The length never changes. Only the breaks do.

We print the ones. Several weeks here say plainly that this office is not needed, and readers take that at face value, go away and arrange them alone. That is the number doing its job. A supplier pays us a commission once a reservation is confirmed and a traveler pays us nothing, so a week marked one costs a reader no more through us than it would alone. It would not be worth printing at all if it only ever said four.

Six fields, one of which you will never see

Step three is the request itself. The form has six fields. Five belong to you, in this order: an empty box you write in first, in your own words, carrying anything we ought to know before we pick up the telephone; then a chooser for the week or the shortlist you are asking about; then a chooser for roughly when; then your name; then an address we can write back to. The sixth is a honeypot, hidden from anyone reading the page and visible only to the machines that fill in forms by themselves. If you can see five boxes, you have seen every box there is.

Sending it holds nothing. No room, no bed and no date is reserved by the act of sending; no card number is asked for anywhere; and this site could not take a payment if you wanted it to, because it has no checkout and never had one. A request is a question. It is not a reservation and commits you to nothing.

Step four is ours, and it happens out of your sight. We take your dates to the supplier who actually runs the week and ask two plain things: is it open, and what is the real figure for those dates. Then we write back with both answers, whichever way they went. Requests are answered within one working day. The form takes requests at any hour, but a person writes the reply, and people work in working days, which is why the commitment is a day and not a number of minutes.

What the supplier sends, where the money goes, and what we do when it goes wrong

Step five is the written confirmation, and it does not come from us. The supplier issues it, in writing, and it states exactly what has been bought: the dates, the beds, the meals if there are meals, the guide if there is one, and the figure. Read it against the week you chose before you agree to it. If a line in it does not match what you were shown here, tell us and we will go back and ask.

Step six is money, and money never passes through this site. You pay the supplier, on the supplier's own terms, by whatever method that supplier uses, under that supplier's deposit and cancellation rules. Those rules differ from one supplier to the next. We put them in front of you before you commit, but we do not write them, cannot set them aside and have no vote in them.

Step seven is what happens when this goes wrong, because it does. A week can be gone by the time we ask: the supplier had a handful of places and they went to people who asked earlier. The figure can come back above the one you read, since a starting figure is the bottom of a range and your dates may not sit at the bottom of it. Suppliers also go quiet for days at a time, as small operators in these places are often two people and a van, and while both are out with guests nobody is reading email. We say so in each case, tell you when we last chased, and offer the nearest week we can actually open.

One thing this office does not do at all is flights. We hold no contract with any carrier, we do not reserve air travel and we will not quote it. Reaching the country is a job you do yourself, and each figure in the catalog starts counting only once your feet are down. Where a week's dates sit awkwardly against the sensible arrivals we will say so, but the flight is yours to reserve. This is a reservations office in the Kansas City metro, at 6317 N Antioch Rd, Suite 108, Gladstone, MO 64119, telephone +1 (816) 414-3106, published by Etre Super Travel Reservations LLC.