How to Save Money With a Complex Vacation Package

The Offer: Mr. Brown is attending a conference for work in Seattle this May.

The Opportunity: I have never seen the Pacific Northwest and a dear friend lives in Portland.

The Complication: Vacation days and money are tight.

The Solution: A customized vacation package.

When I left the South, I forgot to take my laid-back attitude with me. Instead I have morphed into a bona fide city slicker, rushing from one appointment to the next, always scared I’m going to miss out on the fun. And when I vacation, this little habit kicks into overdrive. So what if I can only take two days off work for this little adventure? Surely a long weekend in Seattle and Portland is better than never having seen either city?

And so I set to work researching my travel options. In general I like to book Flight + Hotel vacation packages. Not only do they save you oodles of cash (some websites say as much as $315 per person per trip), they’re also easy to book. But would they work for a complex travel situation like this? My husband’s airfare to and from Seattle is free--as is his hotel. I’d like to fly to Seattle to meet him, then take a hop over to Portland together, and book a hotel in the City of Roses. Basically, I need a flight with three legs and a hotel stay at the end of it. Would booking a vacation package even be possible?!

The answer? Yes and no. Sadly, you can’t yet book a multi-leg flight and add a hotel to one of your stops. Travelocity does allow you to book a Flight + Hotel package where you fly into one city and stay in another, but the stay spans the entire length of your trip, which is not what I need.

BUT I still have two options. I can book a multi-leg flight and book a hotel stay in Portland separately. OR I can book a Flight + Hotel package from Seattle to Portland and add in a round-trip flight from San Francisco to Seattle separately. Are you still with me? Ready to crunch some numbers? Do you have a guess on which is the cheaper option?

Well, the answer is a little anti-climatic, I’m afraid. I used the same travel dates, times, and hotel and the two totals ended up being within THREE MEASLY BUCKS of one another. I know! Who figures this stuff out? Only crazy people like me, apparently. But then I got to wondering if this was because my trip was so short and nearby. What if I tried this same experiment on a far-flung location?

I tried this entire scenario again (do you see what I go through for you guys?!) using a San Francisco/Hong Kong/Bangkok combination, and this time the results seemed to favor the Flight + Hotel package + Flight option. So if you’re planning a complex trip for a longer period of time to a distant location, be sure to price the Flight + Hotel option and then add the rest of your trip to it. But if it’s a short trip, it probably doesn’t matter how you book it.

Man, I’m exhausted now. (Swoons on settee) It's a good thing Blagojevich passed me (and Oprah) over as a candidate for Obama's senate seat.