When you book a vacation, do you go through a travel agent, or do you book by yourself? Do you tend to use buy a package, or piece it together? Which way gets the best price?

By Reds9298 on Sunday, February 13, 2005 - 02:34 pm:

Hi Kaye...We have always booked our trips through an agent and gotten a package deal. The agent does not get any money for it (at least that affects you) and it's ALWAYS cheaper. Multiple times I've tried to price things together myself and the agent always comes up cheaper. I have used travelocity before as well and gotten good deals, but I have only negative things to say about Expedia. I would not go through Expedia for anything again. They tried to charge us for a trip we never took and our cc company had to step in. Packages though are always the best route. Hope this helps.

By Debbie on Sunday, February 13, 2005 - 04:11 pm:

I usually do it myself. We have a Visa and an American Express that we get rewards through and dh travels and gets frequent flyer miles. We also have an AAA card. We are going to California this year for our vacation. I ended up saving an average of $100.00 a night on our hotel with an AAA discount. I also got 3 of the 7 nights free with reward points. We had two free flights and then I got the other 2 for $165.00 each round trip from Chicago to LAX. We are going to Disneyland for a few days and I got a discount on our park tickets through AAA. I guess the main reason I don't like packages is that you usually have to pay a deposit when you book and then the entire amount is due before your trip. Also, you usually get penalized if you change your dates or cancel. Right now, the only thing I would get penalized on if we change our trip is two of our airline tickets. I did check with AAA on doing a package for our Disneyland part of the trip. I ended up getting a better deal booking the hotel and tickets seperately. I would just suggest doing lots of research on your own first. You can then get a good idea on how much it would cost you to book it yourself. You can always then check with a travel agent and see which would be cheaper.

By Livvy on Sunday, February 13, 2005 - 04:12 pm:

We have friends who just went online and went thru all the steps to book a Disney vacation (not sure what site though.) They got a final price and then went to a travel agent to see what they could get there. They got the same trip for $400 less than online!! I guess there are a lot of hidden charges when booking online, according to their travel agent.

By Bea on Sunday, February 13, 2005 - 09:13 pm:

I book my own and do most if not all of my booking online.

By Vicki on Sunday, February 13, 2005 - 09:57 pm:

We almost always use a travel agent. A couple of times we have done some checking online and such and it has always been cheaper for us to book through them. It is so nice to just tell her what we want to do and she does all the research and get us the best price and all of that. It might depend on the travel agent too and how much they have at their disposal and how much research they are willing to put into it. We have a great agent!

By Conni on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 08:51 am:

I do both!

I was worried about the Disney pkg's so I went to an agent for that trip and feel like we got a good price. I did add it up online first and there wasnt much difference either way. The agent had been many times and offered lots of advice, that I otherwise wouldnt have known.

Our ski trip-- I booked online a few weeks ago and just chose the cheapest hotel we could find!! lol We drove- so we didnt need airline tickets and we found discounted lift tickets when we got to town...

By Sunny on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 09:12 am:

If I'm booking a package, I do it with AAA travel agency. If it's not a package, I do it myself.

By Fraggle on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 02:03 pm:

I do everything myself, but it can take a lot of time to find good prices. Last time I planned our trip to Disney, I monitored the airline prices for over a month and booked when it got to a price I was happy with. I also booked my hotel and then rebooked it online when the rate went down close to my travel date. I did the same thing with the car rental.

By Reds9298 on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 03:11 pm:

I agree about AAA - we use them frequently as well and always well worth the money. Good value.