Jun 12 2008
Hawaii Travel: Deal or No Deal?
Before you jump on any deal to Hawaii, no matter how reputable the name is behind the offer, make sure it’s going to actually save you money. Your best buy may be skipping the deal and carefully shopping for air and hotel separately.
Here’s our report on three current promotions.
1. Maui: Summer from $447 each way: Travelzoo Newsletter (June 11)
No Deal: Just a reminder that travel newsletters don’t usually have the best offer. By the time it’s in print the deal may have changed. I priced airfares on four of the cities listed in the Travelzoo Newsletter and found significantly better deals for the same dates of travel.
Boston: (Travelzoo deal: $996) Northwest offered $725.
Charlotte: (Travelzoo deal: $908) American priced this at $556.
Chicago: (Travelzoo deal: $1,020) Check out Alaska at $860.
Indianapolis: (Travelzoo deal: $952) Northwest comes in low at $665.
2. GoHawaii: Save $200 (plus hotel discounts) off your trip to Hawaii.
Mixed Deal: I spent about an hour trying to find the 20% off, or free night, plus $200 instant rebate discounts offered. Unfortunately, I was never able to get both deals. That isn’t to say that they don’t exist, they’re just difficult to find.
Given the excellent Hawaii hotel deals available this summer, and the possibilities to negotiate them directly, I’m not sure any tangible discount is even available on GoHawaii’s offer.
3. United Adds 10 Flights to Hawaii Starting June 15 (Pacific Business News Announcement)
No Deal: We reported on this last week and then waited eagerly for the news of fare offers. United (UAL), it appeared, suddenly had 7,000 seats to fill so where are the deals? At the same time something just didn’t seem right about this. With no further annoucement from UAL on added flights and deals, we did our own research and arrived at this conclusion:
For the most part the flights UAL mentioned had been loaded into their database some time ago, and were not new flights, but actually their traditional summer additions. Beyond what we normally see from United each summer, they only appear to have added three more flights between the west coast to Maui.
What we saw here was just an interesting twist of facts that drew much needed attention to United.
Photo credit: Beat of Hawaii. Molokai’s Papohaku beach park has 3 miles of beautiful sand, gorgeous views and wild surf. You may even have it all to yourself.
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Thanks for pointing out that hidden fact about UAL. Also, thank you for this site. I check it every day for tips and heads up deals for Chicago to Maui for our Sept. wedding. Should we just go ahead and pay any $950 per ticket price (taxes & fees included) because this seems to be the standard fare these days? Do you expect the fare to get slightly lower?
I much agree, Jeff. The so-called vacation package deals can be a trap customers can easily fall into. If you are too lazy to check up on it, you might lose money. Great post ‘Deal or No Deal”!
Thanks for your comments Tina and Pua.
Tina, your situation is made difficult inasmuch as you need to be here for specific dates. Based on that fact alone, if it were me, I’d go ahead and purchase now. The unfortunate thing is that you’ll likely see the deals come, albeit too late for you to take advantage of them.
Aloha,
Jeff
Thanks, Jeff!