I’ve booked family cruise vacations each of the last 5 years. Each year I’ve done all the research online including deciding on point of departure, cruise line and the specific ship on sites such as expedia, vacations to go, and the individual cruise line websites. Despite this online research, I still book with a travel agent because they seem able to match or beat online prices, book multiple rooms near each other, and sometimes obtain larger room credits. If it were possible to accomplish all of the above without an agent at a lower cost I would do so.