More Legroom Please

Hi all,

I figured someone in the hive mind here would know the answer to this. I'm trying to book my honeymoon using the bundle deals (flight + hotel) that many booking websites offer -- the savings look pretty substantial vs. booking independently.

We're getting married on the East Coast, but returning to our home on the West Coast after the honeymoon, so I'm trying to book these as an open jaw and being told by multiple sites that bundle deals are only available as round trips. Any idea why that is? I can't think of an economic reason for it. And, more importantly, any ways around this (other than booking a round trip + one-way)?

Thanks!

MSPeconomist

Are you sure your route qualifies for an open jaw fare, specifically that the unflown part (west to east coast) is shorter in miles (nonstop air distance) than the shorter of the two flown portions, namely east coast to destination and distination to west coast. If not, the itinerary may not qualify to be priced as an open jaw itinerary and would become two one way tickets.

Are you sure the bundled deals really save a lot of money compared to the option to pick your own hotel and flights freely, using advanced purchase airfares and whatever discouted hotel rates (such as AAA) to which you are entitled? Recall that you probably don't earn miles and points on these packages and might not be entitled to any elite benefits either.

Buying a separate one way plane ticket can be expensive and would normally give you no protection in IROPs. Thus you would need to book long connecting times, even overnight.

More Legroom Please

@MSPeconomist -- all good points. As for open jaw pricing, I was unaware of the "lesser of" qualification to define it as an open jaw trip; in this case, our routing does not qualify, so we would be two one-way tickets. Still, though, I don't understand the economic case against offering bundles for this routing. And more than anything, I'm hoping to find a workaround.

As for the discounts, I'm quite sure they're significant -- $3-500/person generally, using the midpoint of the round-trip costs from our origin and destination airports vs. ITA & kayak (hotel) pricing. And the great part is they seem to be as flexible on flight choice as standard bookings, not a limited selection. We just used all our RDMs on a long RTW trip and our status has lapsed as a result, so I'm not too worried about EQMs/points.

pinniped

If you've found a package deal that is actually cheaper than buying the flights and hotels separately, and yields all points and elite benefits on both the hotels and flights, you've truly found a coelacanth.

Is this a resort somewhere that is basically paying for the flights to get people to come? (e.g., a high-end all inclusive? a casino?) Maybe if there's a live travel agent close to the source of the promotion...a company who handles a lot of bookings for that resort or whatever...they could figure out how to make an open jaw work.

The last site I can recall that actually had good package deals was America West Vacations. They often had a Vegas casino that would give you a free room with a flight booking at any available published fare. It would be a solidly Excalibur- or Stratosphere-quality hotel, but for a bunch of guys going to Vegas for a weekend it was perfect.

Efrem

The economic reason is supply and demand. An open-jaw routing is more attractive to many people - such as yourself - than a plain round trip. Therefore, some people are willing to pay more for it - as you may end up doing. That being the case, why should any tour organizer include it free? The only reason to do that would be if existing packages don't sell well. If that's the situation, allowing open-jaw routings is only one of many things an organizer can do to make them more attractive. Not knowing what all the other options are, all we can say is that it may not be the best way to achieve that objective.

beachmouse

Try calling the OTA and seeing if they can do something for you rather than relying on the web interface. Maybe something like tripmasters.com would have a customer service rep that could make it work from their end.

swag

In the mid-late '00s, I used to book the packages relatively often, via expedia or travelocity. Generally, I found the savings minimal, except when I was booking close to departure date. In that case, by adding the hotel, I seemed to be able to book lower fare classes whose advance purchase deadlines had passed, which could make the package a lot cheaper than even the airfare alone. Especially since the sites only required you to add a single hotel night, even if the air portion was for a week or longer.

Anyway, I always got FF credit for the flights, but never earned points for the hotels. This sort of made sense, since air credit is based on miles, but hotel credit is based on spend, and with the package pricing, the hotel price isn't broken out...

More Legroom Please

Thanks for the input everyone! I don't know about mile/point accrual, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn these don't qualify, but the dollar price savings would make it worthwhile.

I have tried talking to OTA customer service reps and not gotten anywhere (they don't seem to have any tools beyond what I have on the webpage); maybe a higher-end TA would have more options to look into.