About HM travel agents:
I just met with STA travel this week and they
do help non-students with travel plans. Supposedly, they specialize in young travelers, offering tours for the 18-35 crowd (which is awesome). I've used them before when I was a student traveling to Paris and they were excellent. They really don't charge that much for their service, and the flight and room deals they found I couldn't find on my own. Anyway, now they are helping FI and I plan our trip to New Zealand and there are all these tours that are offered just through them (several for the 18-35 crowd) and when the lady (Abra) looked up the flights, they were cheaper than I've been seeing - I've been keeping track of flight prices for a couple months now.
Anyway, just thought I'd share my travel agent rec. I was worried about using them at first, but now I'm reassured that they can help us and that they'll find us great deals that I wouldn't be able to on my own. Their office is located on the ave and their site is here:
http://www.statravel.com/cps/rde/xchg/us_division_web_live/hs.xsl/seattle.htm