Travel agencies

I think it's pretty safe to say that Thai people want to make as much money as possible off tourists, and travel agents are no different. I booked a trip for 17 people to get to and from Koh Tao this past weekend for scuba certification, and quite a few of the accommodations we were promised were not actually part of the package! The absence of included food and free rooms for our 2 friends were the main letdowns, which  meant that we were on a much tighter budget than expected. We were told that we were given a discount because of our large size, but it ends up that the travel agency never even contacted the resorts that we had in mind, since they would not be able to offer the all-inclusive trip that we were interested in finding a discount for. It was a frustrating experience to find out the deliberate miscommunication once we had arrived, because it was too late at that point to make changes. In the future, I will just book my own travel.