Costco Travel packages vs planning it myself?

veassie

So sorry if this has already been covered.. eep! >.<

I discovered costco travel today which from what I saw makes it super easy and looked like a good deal.  We are debating between Ireland, Spain and Italy for our September honeymoon.  Are the costco deals really a good deal, or with some obsessive research could I do better searching for hotel and flight deals and peicing a trip together myself?  I like that costco travel puts the whole trip together for you in a neat little package, but was just wondering if you end up paying extra for the convenience of it.  We are planning a week-ish in one of those countries and most of the prices are between 5.5-6.5k (most of what we were looking at do multiple cities within the same country) Advice would be great!

JennLax

I just saw this deal in my e-mail today:

http://tinyurl.com/852l5q3

You'd have to inquire about extra costs from your home airport (or fly to one of their set departure points).

Once you press "get this deal," there is more info:

http://www.aerlingusvacationstore.com/vacations/ireland-4cities-of-ire?utm_source=TravelTicker&utm_medium=E-mail&utm_campaign=11April2012

Good luck!

ETA: Changed the URL to a tiny one because it was pushing out the dimensions of the text and hiding some stuff I wrote.

StephBeanWed61502

We booked our honeymoon in Hawaii through Costco Travel, and we definitely got a better deal that way than we would have by booking the same places on our own.  I'm not sure how it is for their European destinations, but I found, for Hawaii, that we were able to get a lot of little "extras" at the hotel and an upgraded car for less by booking through Costco (example - our hotel, if booked on its own, would've charged us an additional fee for daily breakfast, but with Costco, it was included in the base price, and the base price was less than the price available on the hotel's website).  The only thing we didn't seem to get much of a discount on was the airfare - it seems like those prices are pretty much set by the airlines themselves - but again, I certainly couldn'tve found anything less expensive on my own (and believe me, I looked!).

One tip - when you're actually ready to book, call them instead of booking through their website.  One of the flights we had wanted was booked, so our online reservation got bounced, and it was a PITA to deal with.  Once I called their 1-800 number though, I got a really helpful representative who walked me through everything in about 20 minutes.

alithebride

well, you can price it out and compare-that's the easy answer.

the not so easy answer is that sometimes (not always) you do get a better deal and/or bettr perks by booking through a TA.

It wouldn't hurt to contact them and see what it's all about.

MrsMeganL2012

I got a quote from Costco (for our Tahiti honeymoon) and then went and priced it out separately and the Costco price was definitely better.  

That said, I also contacted two other travel agents and their prices were on par with Costco. 

kozacs

We used Costco for our honeymoon to Hawaii.  The pricing was better than what we could find on our own and better than what two other travel agents quoted us. 

veassie

thanks for all the great info! really appreciate your opinions on this.  ill get a few quotes from some travel agents as well, to get a full picture of the whole thing! thanks!

Jells2dot0

One thing you'll get from some TAs that you won't get from Costco is expertise in the area. Costco's agent are just there to walk through the booking process, not to give you personal advice on hotels, things to do, etc. You don't get insider advice that you may get from a European expert agent. Though, if you like doing research, it doesn't hurt to just book and then do all of the reading up on things yourself.

TravelingJen

Definitely price it out separately. We visited Italy last September for two weeks and spent $5000 on everything (i.e. hotel, food, tours, etc) excluding airfare. The price you are being quoted seems a bit high for one week but I guess a lot of that depends on the hotels you are staying at.