How to gift vacations?
 

I want to give a gift of vacation or hotel packages to friends in HK. But I don't know what the best way to do so because I'm not sure when / where they would like to go. Ideally a hotel gift cert to Macau's Wynn or Venetian would be nice, but doesnt' look like they sell hotel gift certs. And giving AE certs isn't quite the same.

What's the best way to approach this?

Why not contact a TA and buy $500 or whatever worth of "store credit" and let them spend it how they choose.

Have you called the hotel to see if they offer gift packages? Many do but only on the phone.

"store credit" - do you mean buying gift cert from the TA or travel agencies like Virtuoso? Interesting. Didn't know they sell credits / certs. Will look into this.

I haven't called hotel directly either, because I want to see if I can get them gifts w/o tying them with a particular hotel chain / time / location. I'm not sure about my friend's tastes / schedules, so it's pretty hard.

Another option, it's what we did for the brother in law and his family for Christmas, is a gift certificate from Bedandbreakfast.com, it's a cash card they can use at thousands of bed and breakfasts throughout the country.

This way they pick where and when, but it has to be a b&b, not like an amex card which could go to anything.

Several airlines, like American, have gift cards too.