Booking Hawaii Honeymoon

[NewEnglandLady]

So DH and I are finally booking our honeymoon this week and plan to stay in Hawaii in early January. Usually when we book a vacation we just go through orbitz or travelocity, but since this vacation is siginificantly more expensive (and a bit more elaborate since we want to stay on the Big Island and Maui) I''m not quite sure with whom we should book.

For those of you who''ve been to Hawaii, what is the most economical way to book the vacation? Through a company like Orbitz? Through a different website like pricescope? For vacations like this is it best to go through a travel agent? Should I go to Costco and book it there?

I''d like to save some money if I can--originally we didn''t plan to go at such an expensive time of year, but because we are both so busy at work it was the only time we could both carve out.

Thanks for any help!

 

[Skippy123]

For me expedia has been the cheapest (we just booked our trip to europe through expedia) and the first time I went to Kauai we used Expedia. You might want to check out Pleasant Holiday's too (we booked w/them in the past). I looked at Costco and thought it was kind of expensive.
How exciting! I have been thinking about you and your FAB trip to Hawaii!!!

 

[firebirdgold]

For our Hawaiian mini-moon I used tripadvisor.com to research. Then I booked the hotels through the hotel websites. Typically the internet price on the hotel''s own website is as cheap as it is through expedia, or at least pretty close.
The main reason I did this is that while researching hawaiian hotels I kept coming across reviews mentioning how they booked through expedia or something similar and ended up with the most awful rooms in the hotel.
I suspect that hotels know they are getting less money if you book from expedia et al. since there are all those fees you don''t see between what you pay expedia and what expedia pays the hotel. So the hotel gives those people the unremodeled rooms or the rooms over the laundry or the rooms over the delivery ramp, etc.. I just didn''t want to risk it for our honeymoon. Also when booking directly I felt we had a better chance to be upgraded for our honeymoon!

 

[NewEnglandLady]

Thanks, ladies!! Skippy, I just checked out pleasant holidays and the prices were pretty good! And thanks for letting me know about Costco, I think I''m just going to skip that as an option.

Indie, I''ve been checking out tripadvisor all morning and have been trying to compare prices for a package vs. booking individually and am finding the difference to be negligable. I do think you have a better chance of getting a better room or a room upgrade if you book straight through the hotel. I have been upgraded when using expedia, but have only had luck when there are many vacancies at the hotel.