Do flight and hotel packages save money? Yes, often they do
When you are in the travel industry as I am you tend to get a lot of questions from friends and passersby about how to save the most money while booking the best place for a vacation. One of the more common questions is whether or not booking a flight & hotel package is wise. The answer for many people is yes, and it will usually save you money, but there are other things to consider so we’ll discuss the topic in depth below.
Saving money booking a hotel and flight together
If you know how the travel industry works it makes perfect sense that you’d save money by booking a flight and hotel stay all at once. The website, or even travel agent, you book through can earn a small commission on a flight booking, and a larger commission on a hotel. If you book both things at once the site can give up a bit of its commission on one of those to offer you a better deal and still earn more money themselves.
Just now I checked some package deals between New York and Orlando to see what the savings would be. The cheapest roundtrip flights I found were $206 on AirTran Airlines, and a package including a 7-night stay at a 3-star hotel was only $360 per person. That sounds like an amazing deal for the package, but when you look up that specific hotel on its own you’ll find that it goes for only $51 per night including all taxes.
So $357 combined for the hotel stay and $412 combined for the flights for a couple and you get $769 if you buy individually. If you do the package it comes to only $720 for both people. Now, $49 is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s also low enough that you should consider the downsides of packages as well.
Why not book a package?
You can book these package vacations through airlines as well as websites like expedia and travelocity. Depending on who you book it through you might not have much flexibility and you might be a bit trapped if things go wrong.
For example, if you book a hotel and flight separately and the flight gets canceled then you can usually get your room delayed by one night, and you can book a flight on another airline if you need to as well. But if you book together you’ll usually just have to wait for what the first airline is planning on doing.
Even more important is, what if you get to the hotel and you don’t like it or its location? If you booked a package then getting switched to another hotel can be a huge hassle, partly because you’ve likely prepaid for it all. But if you book a hotel on your own you usually only prepay the first night, and if you don’t like it (and something else is available) you can switch without having to get an agency or website involved.
On the other hand, on most routes the flights almost never get canceled, and if you choose your hotel carefully in the first place you’ll probably be fine. So weigh the savings by pricing things individually, and don’t hesitate to save money on a package deal if you’ve done your homework.