Planning a vacation can be exciting, but also overwhelming, especially when it comes to booking flights, hotels, and car rentals. Travel package sites offer a convenient solution by bundling these services together, often saving you both time and money. However, with numerous options available, finding the Best Travel Package Sites for your needs can be challenging. This guide explores the top platforms for booking vacation packages, helping you make informed decisions and secure the best deals for your next trip.
Top Travel Package Websites in 2024
Expedia: The All-Rounder for Vacation Packages
Expedia stands out as one of the most recognized and comprehensive travel package sites. Its strength lies in offering a wide array of bundle options, including flight + hotel, flight + car, hotel + car, and the all-encompassing flight + hotel + car packages. Whether you’re dreaming of a tropical beach getaway or a bustling city adventure, Expedia provides access to destinations across the globe. Known for its reliable pricing, Expedia frequently emerges as a cost-effective choice. In tests, it consistently offered competitive rates and even secured the lowest price in multiple instances.
The platform’s user-friendly interface is equipped with helpful filters to refine your search. For hotels, you can sort by price range, proximity to city centers, guest ratings, package discounts, and hotel class. Flight options can be filtered by preferred departure and arrival times (morning, afternoon, evening), airlines, baggage inclusion (carry-on), and more. Sorting functionalities extend to flight duration, price, departure, and arrival times. The integrated map view is particularly useful for visualizing hotel locations and their surroundings.
Expedia Vacation Packages Search Page: Find flight, hotel, and car rental deals on Expedia.com.
Keep in Mind: While Expedia often highlights potential savings on packages, it’s wise to verify these claims. The displayed savings may not always accurately reflect the actual price difference compared to booking each component separately. In some cases, breaking down the booking into individual flights, hotels, and cars might unveil better deals. Always cross-reference by pricing out the components individually to guarantee you’re securing the most economical option.
Best Feature: Expedia’s extensive choices and consistent pricing solidify its position as a leading site for vacation packages. While it may not invariably offer the absolute lowest price, you can generally expect fair rates and a broad spectrum of options to tailor your ideal vacation.
Expedia Group Sisters: Travelocity, Orbitz, and CheapTickets
Many travelers are unaware that Travelocity, Orbitz, and CheapTickets operate under the Expedia Group umbrella. This shared ownership translates to significant similarities in inventory and pricing across these platforms and Expedia itself. You’ll notice comparable layouts and filtering capabilities as well. Like Expedia, these sister sites support all combinations of vacation packages, allowing you to bundle flights, hotels, and rental cars as needed.
In price comparisons, these sites rarely outperformed Expedia. Typically, rates mirrored Expedia’s, particularly on Travelocity, where pricing was almost identical. Orbitz and CheapTickets occasionally presented slightly more affordable packages for specific flight and car combinations.
Given the pricing consistency, exploring all three sister sites in addition to Expedia might only be necessary if minor price differences are crucial to your budget.
Travelocity Vacation Packages: Explore flight and hotel package deals on Travelocity.
Best Feature: Travelocity, Orbitz, and CheapTickets offer a convenient checkbox labeled “I only need accommodations for part of my trip” on their main booking pages. This feature empowers users to specify a subset of their total trip dates and search for travel packages that align with this shorter accommodation period. Expedia also integrates this useful feature on its search interface.
Note: Hotwire, another Expedia Group property, was found to be slightly less consistent in testing compared to the aforementioned sites. For certain itineraries, nonstop flight options available on other Expedia Group sites were absent when booking packages on Hotwire (although they were available for standalone flight bookings). Pricing on Hotwire also occasionally trended slightly higher.
Priceline: Navigate Deals with Flexibility
Priceline, similar to Expedia and its affiliated sites, provides comprehensive vacation package options encompassing flights, hotels, and rental cars in various combinations. The platform’s search results pages are designed for ease of navigation, featuring abundant filter and sort options, along with a map view for visualizing hotel locations. Priceline boasts a wide selection of hotel choices across popular vacation destinations, catering to diverse budget ranges.
A distinctive aspect of Priceline is its flight result display. Departure and return flights are presented together as pairs, streamlining the selection process but potentially requiring more scrolling to pinpoint your desired flights. It’s worth noting that not all flights available when booking airfare separately on Priceline appear accessible when booking a package. Therefore, checking both package and standalone flight options is advisable.
Priceline Vacation Packages: Book your flight, hotel, and car rental package on Priceline.
Priceline’s pricing performance is generally mid-range. While it emerged as the most affordable in one test, it was also the priciest in two others. Overall, Priceline offered better-than-average prices in 60% of test cases. To facilitate savings, Priceline features “Express Deals” for rental cars, a unique opaque option where the rental car brand is revealed only after booking. Standard car rentals, allowing brand selection, are also readily available.
Best feature: Priceline excels in maintaining your selected flight and rental car preferences as you browse through different hotel options. This eliminates the repetitive task of re-selecting these preferences each time you consider a new hotel, enhancing user convenience.
CheapCaribbean.com: Your Gateway to Caribbean All-Inclusive Resorts
As the name suggests, CheapCaribbean.com specializes in vacation packages to the Caribbean. While its scope is narrower than broader platforms, it’s a valuable resource, particularly for trips to the Caribbean, where package deals, especially for honeymoons and all-inclusive vacations, are highly sought after. In tests focused on Caribbean destinations, CheapCaribbean.com consistently delivered below-average prices.
CheapCaribbean.com excels as one of the best vacation websites for all-inclusive packages. After inputting your trip details, you can further refine results using filters such as “adults only,” “children’s amenities,” and “luxury,” catering to specific travel preferences. Each hotel-specific page provides a compilation of current promotions, on-site activities, and the property’s TripAdvisor Traveler Rating, offering comprehensive insights.
CheapCaribbean.com: Discover all-inclusive vacation packages to the Caribbean.
However, CheapCaribbean.com presents some limitations compared to more versatile travel package sites. A map view for hotel location comparison is absent. Additionally, the inability to group Houston’s airports into a single search, while “all airports” selection is available for major cities like New York and Washington, D.C., can be inconvenient for some users. Furthermore, package options are primarily limited to flight + hotel combinations; adding car rentals or creating alternative package combinations is not supported. Despite these drawbacks, the attractive deals, particularly for flight and hotel packages, make it a worthwhile option, especially if your travel plans center around the Caribbean.
Best Feature: The “Deals of Fortune” feature offers bookings where the destination is known, but the specific resort remains undisclosed until approximately a week before departure. This is an appealing option for budget-conscious travelers with flexible preferences regarding specific islands or properties.
Kayak: Meta-Search Efficiency for Package Deals
Kayak, a popular meta-search engine, streamlines the process of finding travel packages by simultaneously searching numerous leading travel package sites. This saves travelers valuable time and effort. However, Kayak’s package search is primarily configured for flight + hotel combinations by default. While adding a car rental might be possible through some partner sites subsequently, those seeking flight + car packages directly will need to explore alternative platforms.
Kayak’s search results display the most affordable packages from various sites, including Priceline (a sister company), Expedia, and CheapCaribbean.com. A map view is available, and the results page incorporates both air and hotel-related filters, facilitating easy filtering for nonstop flights, complimentary breakfast, or specific hotel preferences.
Price discrepancies between Kayak’s listed prices and the actual prices on the source sites were observed, a common occurrence with meta-search platforms. Interestingly, in some instances, clicking through from Kayak resulted in different prices compared to searching the same itinerary directly on the booking site’s homepage. For example, a Las Vegas package quoted at $819 per person on Priceline via Kayak was priced at $783 when booked directly on Priceline. Conversely, another test yielded the opposite outcome, with a cheaper price after clicking from Kayak than booking directly on Priceline. This highlights the importance of verifying prices through both avenues when utilizing meta-search engines like Kayak.
Best Feature: Kayak’s ability to aggregate searches from multiple vacation booking sites in one place is a significant time-saving advantage. Although Kayak may not always pinpoint the absolute lowest price, it serves as an excellent starting point for research and gaining an overview of available options and price ranges.
Funjet Vacations: Promo Codes and Focused Destinations
The Funjet Vacations homepage initially presents a single package option: flight + hotel. However, workarounds exist to incorporate rental cars by adding them at the end of a flight + hotel or individual flight booking process. Funjet provides ample sorting options for search results, including price, hotel name, rating, points of interest, and location.
Similar to CheapCaribbean.com, Funjet lacks the “all airports” selection for certain cities like Houston or Chicago, which can be slightly inconvenient. Funjet’s pricing consistency can also vary, ranging from the most affordable in one test to the most expensive in another. Nevertheless, Funjet remains a worthwhile site to compare with others when planning your vacation package.
Funjet Vacations: Find flight and hotel deals with automatic promo codes applied.
Best Feature: Funjet distinguishes itself by automatically applying relevant promotional codes to your search, eliminating the need to manually scour the web for coupons.
Note: For trips to the Caribbean, Central or South America, Hawaii, or Mexico, consider exploring Funjet’s sister site, Apple Vacations. While its destination coverage is more limited than Funjet’s, prices are often slightly more competitive. CheapCaribbean.com also shares parent company Apple Leisure Group with Funjet and Apple Vacations.
Conclusion:
Choosing the best travel package site depends on your specific needs and preferences. Expedia and its sister sites offer vast choices and consistent pricing, making them reliable all-rounders. Priceline provides flexibility and unique deal-finding features. CheapCaribbean.com excels in Caribbean all-inclusive packages, while Kayak saves time with its meta-search capabilities. Funjet Vacations stands out with automatic promo code application. Regardless of your chosen platform, remember to compare package prices against booking components separately to ensure you’re truly getting the best value for your vacation budget. Careful comparison and understanding the strengths of each site will empower you to book smarter and travel happier.
