Booking flights, hotels, and car rentals together not only saves you valuable time but can also significantly reduce your travel expenses. Finding the Best Travel Site For Package Deals is crucial before making such a substantial investment in your vacation.
To help you navigate the crowded landscape of online travel agencies, we’ve rigorously tested numerous vacation package sites to pinpoint those offering the most competitive prices and the most user-friendly booking experiences. Our research revealed that while many top-tier vacation package websites empower you to bundle any combination of flights, hotels, and rental cars, others offer more restricted options, often defaulting to flight and hotel packages. However, don’t be discouraged if you need a car with a flight and hotel deal; some sites allow you to seamlessly add a rental car even if it’s not initially presented on the package booking page.
It’s also wise to compare the total cost of a bundled vacation against booking each component separately. Package deals aren’t always the cheaper route, and sometimes, booking your airfare independently can unlock a wider selection of flight choices. During our tests, we occasionally encountered package deals where the automatically included flight options had excessively long layovers or highly inconvenient departure times, like the dreaded 4:30 a.m. flight.
Keep a close watch for resort fees. While many of the best vacation booking sites might not include these in the initial per-person price estimates because hotels collect them separately, they can noticeably inflate your trip’s final cost. Similarly, be mindful of optional airline baggage fees, particularly if you’re flying basic economy, as these can also add to your overall expenses. Some vacation package sites are more transparent about these extra fees than others.
Finally, it’s important to understand that many of the best sites for vacation packages are under the umbrella of the same parent company. This often results in similar inventory and pricing across different platforms. Recognizing these interconnected sites can save you considerable time in your research.
Top Travel Package Websites: A Detailed Comparison
We’ve rigorously evaluated the leading platforms to compare their pricing, inclusions, and user experience. Below are our top recommendations for the best websites to book vacations, presented in no particular order. Dive into our detailed analysis of each to find your perfect match.
Expedia
Illustration of a laptop computer screen showing the vacation packages search page for Expedia
Image alt text: Expedia Vacation Packages search page displayed on a laptop, highlighting its user-friendly interface for booking travel deals.
Expedia’s strong reputation as one of the best travel package sites is well-deserved. This well-known platform provides a comprehensive range of bundling options, including flight and hotel, flight and car, hotel and car, and the all-encompassing flight, hotel, and car package. Expedia covers destinations around the globe, ensuring options for virtually any travel aspiration. Pricing reliability is another Expedia strength; it secured the lowest price in two of our five test bookings and consistently offered below-average prices in nearly all other tests.
However, it’s worth noting that the advertised package savings didn’t always align perfectly with the actual price difference when we calculated the individual components of the trip separately. In one test case, booking flights, hotels, and cars individually turned out to be more economical. Therefore, approach the stated savings with a degree of caution and, ideally, verify the component prices separately to guarantee you’re truly getting the best deal on your vacation package.
Expedia boasts a wealth of helpful filters to refine your search. You can sort hotels by price, distance from the city center, guest rating, package discount, and hotel class. Flight options can be filtered by general departure and arrival times (morning, evening), airline, carry-on baggage inclusion, and more. Flight results can also be sorted by duration, price, departure time, and arrival time. The map view is a valuable asset for visually assessing hotel locations.
Best Feature: Expedia’s extensive selection and consistent pricing establish it as a top contender for the best site for vacation packages. While it might not always guarantee the absolute lowest price, you’re likely to secure a competitive rate with a vast array of choices.
Expedia’s Sister Sites: Travelocity, Orbitz, and CheapTickets
Illustration of a laptop computer screen showing the vacation packages search page for Travelocity
Image alt text: Travelocity Vacation Packages search page on a laptop, showcasing its familiar layout and travel deal options, similar to Expedia.
Many travelers are unaware that Travelocity, Orbitz, and CheapTickets are all part of the Expedia Group family. Consequently, they often mirror Expedia’s inventory and pricing closely. These sister sites feature similar designs and filtering capabilities. Like Expedia, they offer every conceivable vacation package combination involving flights, hotels, and/or rental cars, making them solid alternatives when searching for the best travel site for package deals.
In our tests, it was uncommon for these sites to outperform Expedia on price. Generally, rates were either identical, particularly on Travelocity, or marginally higher. However, Orbitz and CheapTickets did present slightly cheaper packages for one flight and car itinerary.
Given the price similarity, searching all three sites in addition to Expedia might only be necessary if a few dollars difference is critical to your budget. For most users looking for cheap vacation packages, starting with Expedia and then checking one or two of these sister sites if needed is a practical approach.
Best Feature: Travelocity, Orbitz, and CheapTickets include a convenient checkbox on their main booking page labeled “I only need accommodations for part of my trip.” This unique feature enables users to specify a subset of their travel dates and search for vacation packages exclusively within that timeframe, offering flexibility for travelers with variable accommodation needs. This feature is also available on Expedia’s search page.
Note: The Expedia Group also owns Hotwire. In our testing, Hotwire wasn’t as consistently reliable as the other three. For one itinerary, a nonstop flight available on other sites was absent when booking a Hotwire package (though it was available when booking a standalone flight on Hotwire). Pricing in some searches also tended to be slightly higher than on the other sister sites.
Priceline
Illustration of a laptop computer screen showing the vacation packages search page for Priceline
Image alt text: Priceline Vacation Packages search interface displayed on a laptop screen, emphasizing its comprehensive options for travel bundles.
Similar to Expedia and its related platforms, Priceline provides every possible combination of flights, hotels, and rental cars, solidifying its place among the best travel package sites. Its search results pages are user-friendly, offering numerous filters and sorting options, along with a map view for hotels. Priceline provides a wide array of hotel choices across popular vacation destinations, catering to all budget levels.
One distinctive characteristic of Priceline is its flight result page, which displays departure and return flights as pre-selected pairs, rather than allowing individual selection. While this streamlines the booking process by reducing clicks, it might require more scrolling to find your ideal flight combination. It’s also worth noting that some flights available when booking airfare separately on Priceline might not appear as options within a package deal. Therefore, cross-checking both package and standalone flight options is advisable when using Priceline to ensure you are getting the best vacation package deals.
Priceline’s pricing performance was generally in the mid-range. It secured the lowest price in one of our tests but was the most expensive in two others. Overall, it offered better-than-average prices roughly 60 percent of the time. To help travelers save, Priceline features “Express Deals” for rental cars, an opaque option where the specific rental car brand is revealed only after booking. Standard rental car options, allowing brand selection, are also available.
Best feature: Once you’ve chosen your flight and rental car preferences, Priceline conveniently retains these selections as you explore different hotel options. This eliminates the repetitive task of re-selecting your flights and car each time you consider a new hotel, saving you time and frustration when looking for the best travel site for package deals.
CheapCaribbean.com
Illustration of a laptop computer screen showing the vacation packages search page for CheapCaribbean.comImage alt text: CheapCaribbean.com Vacation Packages website displayed on a laptop, highlighting its focus on Caribbean travel deals and all-inclusive packages.
As its name suggests, CheapCaribbean.com specializes in a specific region, unlike the broader scope of other sites on this list. However, if you’re planning a getaway to the Caribbean, particularly popular destinations for honeymoon packages, CheapCaribbean.com is definitely worth exploring. In our Caribbean-focused tests, the site consistently delivered below-average prices, making it a strong contender for cheap vacation packages to this region.
CheapCaribbean.com excels as one of the best vacation websites for all-inclusive packages. After entering your trip details, you can refine your search using filters like “adults only,” “children’s amenities,” and “luxury,” catering to diverse travel preferences. Each hotel’s dedicated page provides a list of current promotions, on-site activities, and the property’s TripAdvisor Traveler Rating.
In some aspects, CheapCaribbean.com is less sophisticated than other comprehensive travel package sites. It lacks a map view to compare hotel locations. Another minor inconvenience is the inability to group Houston’s airports into a single search, although “all airports” selection is available for major cities like New York City and Washington, D.C. Despite these minor drawbacks, the attractive deals, especially on flight and hotel packages, make it a valuable resource. Car rental options aren’t available, limiting package combinations, but travel insurance and airport transfers can be added for the destinations we checked.
Best Feature: The “Deals of Fortune,” feature offers bookings where you know the destination but the specific resort remains a surprise until about a week before your trip. This is an exciting option for budget-conscious travelers who are flexible about their exact island or resort and are looking for truly cheap vacation packages.
Kayak
Illustration of a laptop computer screen showing the vacation packages search page for Kayak
Image alt text: Kayak Vacation Packages search page on a laptop, illustrating its meta-search functionality for comparing travel deals across multiple sites.
Kayak, a popular meta-search engine, saves travelers time by aggregating results from many of the best travel package sites with a single search. However, package customization is limited; it defaults to searching flight and hotel bundles. While you might be able to add a car rental on some partner sites later in the booking process, for dedicated flight and car packages, you’ll need to explore other platforms.
Kayak’s results display the lowest priced packages from various sites, including Priceline (Kayak’s parent company), Expedia, and CheapCaribbean.com. It includes a map view and filters for both flights and hotels, simplifying the process of finding nonstop flights, complimentary breakfast, or specific hotels. This makes Kayak a useful tool to quickly compare vacation package websites.
We observed that prices listed on Kayak didn’t always precisely match the prices on the source site upon clicking through—a common occurrence with meta-search engines. However, we also occasionally found price discrepancies in the other direction, where the price after clicking from Kayak differed from searching the same itinerary directly on the booking site’s homepage. For example, a Las Vegas package appeared at $819 per person on Priceline via Kayak, but was $783 when booked directly on Priceline. Conversely, another test showed a cheaper price after clicking from Kayak than booking directly on Priceline. The key takeaway is to verify prices both ways when utilizing a meta-search site like Kayak to ensure you secure the best deal on vacation packages.
Best Feature: The ability to search multiple vacation booking sites simultaneously is a significant time-saver. While Kayak might not always pinpoint the absolute lowest price, it’s an excellent starting point to survey available options and get a general understanding of market prices.
Funjet Vacations
Illustration of a laptop computer screen showing the vacation packages search page for Funjet VacationsImage alt text: Funjet Vacations website displayed on a laptop, showcasing its focus on flight and hotel packages and destinations for leisure travel.
The Funjet homepage primarily offers flight and hotel packages. However, you can add a rental car later in the booking process, either after selecting a flight and hotel package or even with an individual flight booking. Funjet provides ample sorting options for results, including price, hotel name, rating, points of interest, and location, making it easier to find the best travel site for package deals for your specific needs.
Similar to CheapCaribbean.com, Funjet lacks the option to select “all airports” for certain cities like Houston or Chicago, which can be slightly inconvenient. Funjet’s pricing also showed some inconsistency in our tests, ranking as the cheapest in one instance and the most expensive in another. Despite these points, Funjet remains a worthwhile site to compare when booking your vacation, especially when looking for cheap vacation packages.
Best Feature: Funjet automatically applies any applicable promotional codes to your search, eliminating the need to manually search the web for coupons. This feature ensures you don’t miss out on potential savings.
Note: If your travel plans include the Caribbean, Central or South America, Hawaii, or Mexico, consider exploring Funjet’s sister site, Apple Vacations. While its destination coverage is narrower than Funjet’s, we often found slightly better prices there. CheapCaribbean.com is also part of the same parent company, Apple Leisure Group, so checking across these related sites can be beneficial for finding the best vacation package deals in these regions.
Book Your Stay With SmarterTravel Hotels
If you’re ready to plan your next trip but prefer not to commit to a pre-packaged bundle, you can still achieve significant savings by booking your hotel stay through SmarterTravel Hotels.
Image alt text: SmarterTravel Hotels logo, promoting their hotel booking platform for individual hotel reservations and travel savings.
By exploring these best travel site for package deals, you are well-equipped to plan your next vacation efficiently and economically. Remember to compare prices, consider package inclusions, and always be aware of potential extra fees to maximize your savings and travel satisfaction.
