travelocity

Don’t Spend $1,000 Too Much On Your Next Vacation

March 31, 2009 By Bimmia

Hopefully you aren’t one of those people that has come to rely on one or two travel sites for all your travel planning needs. If you are, it might be costing you a lot of money, especially when it comes to booking vacation packages.

In this particular investigation, we take a close look at the the differences in prices for Caribbean vacation packages at some of the more popular travel sites on the internet. The differences will shock you.

This should be mandatory reading for anyone planning a vacation or a honeymoon.

Introduction

In our analysis we examined the differences in booking a vacation package (airfare +hotel) to the Caribbean – Barbados to be specific. We checked the vacation package prices to three different resorts in Barbados at 5 different popular travel websites.

The Sites We Researched:

www.cheapcaribbean.com

This selection of sites is representative of the market in general. We included the big 3, a relatively new online travel agency – Bookit, and a popular specialty or niche travel agency – Cheap Caribbean.

Package Details:

This rates shown in this example are vacation package rates for 2 adults traveling from Atlanta (ATL) to Barbados (BGI) for the week of May 2nd to May 9th (8 days, 7 nights). We compare the package rates offered by the travel agencies listed above for 3 different destinations in Barbados: Hilton Barbados, The Crane Resort, Almond Beach Club & Spa (all inclusive).

Results

The first thing to note is that at the time of this research, the price of just the airfare to Barbados was $605 per person, or a total of $1210 for the trip. This rate was the same across all sites. All prices shown below are based on airfare for two adults and a 7 night stay in Barbados.

Hilton Barbados:

Cheap Caribbean $2,757

Travelocity – $2,939

Orbitz – $3,432

Priceline – $3,527 (Priceline required an overnight stay on the return)

Expedia -$3,532

BookIt – Hotel not available on BookIt.

Crane Resort:

BookIt – $1,894

Travelocity – $2,241

Expedia – $2,260

Orbitz – $2,584

Cheap Caribbean – $3,295

Priceline – Hotel not available on Priceline

Almond Beach Club & Spa (all inclusive)

Priceline – $2,711 (Priceline required an overnight stay on the return)

BookIt – $3,297

Orbitz – $3,376

Travelocity – $3,512

Expedia – $3,552

Cheap Caribbean – $3,725

Conclusion

As we alluded to in the intro, some of these results are quite surprising, if not staggering. The variance between the highest and lowest prices were $400, $775, and $1000. What is even more interesting is that there was really no consistency to the results. Cheap Caribbean had the lowest price to the Hilton Barbados by almost $200, but had by far the worst price to the other two hotels. Priceline had the cheapest price to Almond Beach Club & Spa by almost $600, but was out-priced by more than that amount at the Crane Resort. Relative newcomer, BookIt was best and second best price at the two hotels for which they had prices.

What is very clear from this is that you cannot count on any one site to deliver the best price, and that shopping around can save hundreds of dollars. We should also remind you that these represent only a sampling of the dozens of online travel agents.

Although this is only one example, these sort of price differences are very common on vacation packages. What is also a little scary is that some of the more expensive vacation packages are promoted as “vacation deals”.

In a separate article we tell you if you will save money by booking the flight and hotel separately or does booking it as a package saves you money.

Is a Vacation Package Really a Discount?

March 31, 2009 By Bimmia

You want to go on vacation and you want to get a discount. Sites all over the internet offer discount vacation packages, but are they really a discount? Well, we have done some research to try and figure out the answer. After reading this article, you will have a better understanding of discount vacation packages and where the best places are to find them.

Discount Vacation Package – An Analysis

For the purpose of this analysis we are defining a “vacation package” as a single booking that includes both flight and hotel. A vacation package can also include car rental, but we have decided to focus on the flight and hotel portions of the package.

Vacation Package Details: Who, Where, & When?

To perform an analysis on the quality of the discount, we must first decide how many people are going, where we want to go, and when. Our mythical trip will be:

A trip for 2 adults from Atlanta to Barbados for the week of May 2nd to May 9th.

To gain an even better understanding of the size of the package discounts offered, we have priced the package at three different hotels/resorts in Barbados:

Sites We Researched

www.cheapcaribbean.com

This selection of sites is representative of the market in general. We included the big 3, a midsized online travel agency – Bookit, and a specialty or niche travel agency – Cheap Caribbean.

Results

The first thing to note is that at the time of this research, the price of just the airfare to Barbados was $552per person, or a total of $1104 for the trip. This rate was virtually the same across all travel agencies. Also, all prices shown below are based on airfare for two adults and a 7 night stay in Barbados.

Vacation Package Prices

The Crane Resort

Lowest – $2,026 – BookIt

Highest – $3,180 – Cheap Caribbean

Hilton Barbados

Lowest – $2,721 – Cheap Caribbean

Highest – $3,818 – Expedia

Almond Beach Village

Lowest – $3,429 – BookIt

Highest – $3,786 – Expedia

Given those prices, and the widely available price of airfare for 2 of $,1104, we can price the hotel portion of the cheapest discount vacation package as such:

The Crane Resort – $922

Hilton Barbados – $1,617

Almond Beach Village – $2,325

Now, the question is, can you get a better price at those hotels without the package? Using only the sites in our test, here’s the best price we could find each of the hotels and the discount you get by booking the package:

The Crane Resort – BookIt -$1,381 (More than the discount package by $452)

Hilton Barbados – Travelocity – $2,113 (More than the discount package by $496)

Almond Beach Village – BookIt – $2,462 (More than the discount package by $137)

The results look very convincing. Booking travel as a package can provide you a substantial discount on your travel. Case closed right? Not so fast my friend.

We took our study one step further, what if you expand your list of hotel booking sites? Well we did that, and here’s what we found. For the Crane Resort and Hilton Barbados, we couldn’t find a better deal anywhere. BUT for Almond Beach Village, we did find a better deal on just the resort stay. How much better? Way better. We found a rate for Almond Beach Village of only $1,666 on www.gtahotels.com. That is a savings over the best package deal of $659 (2,325 – 1,666). That is a lot of cash.

Summary

Here is what you should take away from this:

From site to site, not all packages are created equal – this is clearly seen in the variance between best and worst price of the same package on different sites . For more on this variance check out this related article on Vacation Package Price Differences.
At any one site, the package deal is likely to be a discount over booking the components of the trip separately. In fact, many of the largest sites show you the discount you are getting.
If you really want the best deal, you need to search around. Use the big name sites, and some of the smaller ones. Look at this list of travel agent sites for some options.

Will Travel Site Kayak.com Save You Money?

February 21, 2009 By Bimmia

To answer the question of how good Kayak is, you must first understand what Kayak is. Kayak is not an online travel agency like Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz – meaning Kayak does not actually book travel. Kayak is a search engine – think Google for travel information. Kayak, founded in 2004, allows users to search for flights, hotels, car rentals, cruises and vacation packages. In this article we will focus on how well Kayak works for booking flights and hotels.

How Does Kayak Work for Hotels and Flights?

When you perform a search on Kayak (for flights or hotels) Kayak begins searching sites for the best rate based on the dates and places you have entered. Kayak uses two primary sources to find this information. Kayak searches:

The rates offered directly by the provider – the hotel or the airline.
The rates offered by dozens of online travel agencies like Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz.

However, and this is important, not all the results are combined into one page. Kayak, will show you all the best rates from the providers (hotels & airlines) on their result page, but for the rates offered by most of the sites like Expedia, Hotwire, and Travelocity, Kayak simply opens a new page and directs you to those sites. The rates offered by thoses sites cannot be seen in the Kayak results. What this means is that when Kayak shows you the best rate for a flight or hotel – it does not compare it to the rates offered by some of the biggest online travel agents.

Does Kayak Have the Lowest Rates?

Now that you understand exactly how Kayak works, you can probably guess that the answer to this question is NO. However, just because Kayak does not always, or perhaps even usually, find the lowest rate does not mean you shouldn’t use Kayak. In fact, if you are looking for the best deal on a hotel or flight, you would be foolish to ignore Kayak.

Because Kayak is not actually making the reservation (they just redirect you to the site with the best offer) they do not have to have booking arrangements with all the hotels and airlines, and consequently they often have more providers to choose from. It is also worth mentioning that Kayak has a very sleek and intuitive website and they make finding the best deal on their site very easy. Kayak should definitely be a part of your travel booking routine, but don’t become too reliant on them because sometimes they miss better deals on other online travel agency sites.

Final Kayak Tips

When using Kayak, make sure you select the checkboxes to search the other booking sites.
Don’t forget that it’s Kayak not Kyack – you’d be surprised how many people misspell it.