New Costco Travel plans, using AI to automate services and most importantly, drive ancillary sales. Costco Travel and Hawaiian Airlines track record in this area isn’t stellar, making this new venture’s ambitious claims a tough sell until proven otherwise.
Costco is never going to be a bad deal, rack rate at worst. I value my relationship with them but I always book directly or through Amex.
Any car rentals I book for leisure – I bounce it off Auto Slash which keeps checking until the day of the car rental pick-up for the best price.
As far as Hawaiian and Costco, at this point, Alaska cannot be involved in those airline-agency deals/discussions that Hawaiian has initiated.
If it works, and the merger is approved, Alaska may well indeed permit a NDC connection for Costco Travel through Sabre. Alaska will not keep/maintain the Amadeus CRS system that Hawaiian uses – everything will transition to Sabre.
How does this help Costco Travel right now? Allows them to book intra-island segments which Hawaiian has blocked third parties from selling, and eliminating a pain point that Hawaiian created.
Have had problems in the past with booking through travel sites like Expedia ,et al, especially when there’s a hitch during the actual travel. Now I only book direct with airlines. Too many middlemen and probs otherwise. Same with rental cars. Kihei Rent a Car on Maui is the best, most honest vendor on island.
I don’t know if Costco Travel is cheaper or not. If you have an issue with a hotel, flight , Costco travel is who you deal with. They will make it right and could refund your Costco visa card accordingly.I think resort fee’s are waived and most of the time they include a shopping card perk. At least if you have a Costco Executive Membership and spend over 2000 a year the 120 annual membership is returned as a rebate check. Third party websites might be cheaper but wait until you have a problem. Third party sites might just respond by sorry nothing we can do. Have a good day. Hint: Look at Priceline,Expedia,Orbitz,Hotwire,Kayak,Travelocity one star reviews.
We have booked through Costco for all our car rentals, as well as hotels and condos in Hawaii for years. We have yet to have a bad experience, simple, informative and user friendly!
Why go to Hawaii when Costco brought Hawaii to their stores. I saw a May Lei Flower in a box. On Oahu in 2009 I remember these costing $8.99 or 9.99. In a Costco on the mainland the same lei flower deal was $19,99. For one flower. Nobody even payed attention at that price. Pure Greed. Oh, I forgot to mention this was only the day before yesterday. Hey everyone look what kind of deal I got on airfare though. Better than Southwest $50%discount off deal. This was Free!!!! Thanks for reminding me that the Hawaiian Greed is fully alive and well.
Once again, Rob and Jeff, you are providing valuable information for all travelers. Travel booking has become a real chore. Who do you believe? There are too many untruthful reviews. How many stops do we endure for air travel? I will use Costco Travel because my experience is that the company consistently provides value and cares about its members. Costco also has a good reputation for employee compensation.
Thanks for your honest, unvarnished look at tourism!
Hi Hugh.
Thanks very much!
Aloha.
Such a deal. Party of 4 in Nov. Dec Maui Sheraton (4star) air (Midwest) and car for 5 nights. Over $8300. Thousands more than any 2Br/2ba STVR that’s on the water facing west.
At the prompting of a relative, I tried booking a trip later in the year through the CostCo travel site. I then booked the same trip with the hotel’s site and the same airline (Hawaiian). The CostCo trip was about $5K and manually booking the trip was about $3K.
Perhaps occasionally there are deals to be had, but no matter what 3rd party site I’ve tried to use in the past, be it Orbitz, Expedia, or whatever (they are all the same company now anyway, right?) their package trip always ended up being more expensive.
Like others have said, I have found good deals on car rentals through CostCo.
I’ve been booking travel using Costco Travel for years. Like anything else it requires time to learn how best to use their site.
Costco’s strength is resort stay I recently booked travel to BI for October bundling flight with Hawaiian, rental car and resort stay at Hapuna Beach. I usually do not include flight as part of the package, but it came in so reasonable that I couldn’t turn it down.
Also Costco’s resort stay packages are usually loaded with perks. Currently they’re offering packages to the Hawaii, especially to Maui, that are loaded with perks.
Is it perfect? No. It will be interesting to see how this new partnership works going forward.
Costco car rentals are the best. Cannot beat their price. Plus you can keep checking until the very last minute & get the cheapest deal. Easy to cancel older reservation.
Gotta disagree here… I recently booked a car rental through Orbitz for December…was almost half the price of Costco.
That might be true right now but keep checking, December is a long ways away and I guarantee you the Costco rate will drop significantly by then. I’ve been using Costco for my Maui rentals for 10+ (15+ trips) years and they’ve by far been the cheapest every single time plus you don’t get charged until you drop the car off.
Just checked Obitz for Sept. It is twice Costco’s price. Hmmm.