A travel agent can help you find the best cruise and the best deal

Question: Is it cheaper to book a cruise online through the cruise line or through a travel agent?

--Cindy Gardina

Answer: It may or may not be cheaper to book through a travel agent, but it is definitely smarter. Here’s why:

If you want chocolate, you can go to See’s Candies. The chocolate may even be on sale. But you’ll get only See’s. And that’s not, I am here to testify, a bad thing.

But suppose you also like Godiva or Toblerone or Amedei or La Maison du Chocolat. What then? Wouldn’t you need a guide to tell you which one is right for you?

“The cruise line only has their products to sell, their ships, their cabins, their ports of call,” says Jay Rein, chief executive and president of TravelWorm.com, an online travel agency.

Cruises used to come in two flavors: one, for the newly wed, and the other, for nearly dead. That notion is more outdated than the fur you’ve hidden in the closet. There are different kinds of cruises for different kinds of people and different price ranges and different kinds of ships.

“The [travel] agent can sell you everybody’s cruise ship, everybody’s extracurricular activities, everybody’s options,” Rein says. “An agency has a greater portfolio to choose from.”

As for price, an agency worth its salt should be able to help you get the most for your money, whether it’s alerting you to an especially good deal or getting you upgrades and perks.

An agent also can help you book tickets to your gateway destination and arrange overnight stays if necessary.

If you want the human touch, try ASTA.org or www.cruising.org/planyour cruise/experts.cfm.

But steer away from the agent who doesn’t ask enough questions to know your “vacation personality” and immediately tries to tell you that a certain cruise line on a certain date is the ticket, says Evan Eggers, president of SureCruise.com, a cruise-only online agency.

You also can book through an on- line third-party agency or go to a site that will compete for your business, such as CruiseCompete.com.

If I set sail again, I’ll use an agent, whether it’s clicks or bricks because, frankly, he or she (or it) will offer to help. And when was the last time anybody else in the travel industry bothered to do that?

Have a travel dilemma? Write to travel@latimes.com.