True bargains exist, but finding them takes lots of legwork

WHO could resist a fourth night free at a hotel? Or a room rate that includes champagne, a round of golf or a gift certificate?

Well, I could. Too often, I’ve found in years of consumer reporting, hotel packages aren’t bargains. That’s why I was surprised to find actual savings in spot-checks of several recent packages.

Even as hotel prices increase, “the number of not-good-deal packages is at an all-time low,” said Bjorn Hanson, New York-based hospitality consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers, an international accounting company.

You can thank the Internet and yourself for that.

“Guests can do research so easily,” Hanson said. Hoteliers, he explained, are wary of alienating customers.

Amy Ziff, editor at large for online travel seller www.travelocity.com, put it this way: “Travelers are pretty savvy. They know the game.”

In this contest, your best weapon is a calculator. “People have to do the math,” Ziff said.

You’ll need patience too. Evaluating packages can be tedious. With rates shifting by the minute and information available from multiple outlets, such as third-party sellers, the hotel’s reservations number and its website, Hanson said, “guests have more work to do now than ever before.”

But the work can be worth your time or worth paying a travel agent to do. In my research, I found packages that saved quite a bit, a little or nothing.

Here are some examples. In most cases, I used the hotels’ own websites, chose dates randomly and, except where noted, quoted rates without taxes. (Some prices may no longer be available.)

“Free” nights: These may not be the cheapest deal.

The Sonesta Maho Beach Resort & Casino in St. Martin, for instance, advertised a “Fourth Night Free Special,” good through Oct. 31, on its website. With that special, the four-night tab for Sept. 29 to Oct. 2 totaled $630 for a Supersaver King room.

The package beat the hotel’s “best available rate” total of $760. But I could have paid only $500 using the resort’s $125-per-night “Web rate.”

No. 1 lesson: It’s not the “free” night; it’s the cost of the paid nights that counts. Effectively, I would pay $157.50 per night under the free-night special.

No. 2 lesson: “Best available rate” isn’t always the cheapest.

Breakfast included: If you want to eat at the hotel, you may save at least modestly with a bed-and-breakfast package.

At the Estancia La Jolla Hotel & Spa, for instance, which is rated Four Diamonds by AAA, the “Bed & Breakfast Package” for two was listed as $329 per night for Sept. 29 to 30. That was $15.90 per night less than the cost of separately booking the “best available rate” ($309) and buying two buffet breakfasts ($17.95 per person). If you booked the AAA room rate ($299), savings fell to $5.90.

Golf, anyone? The price of the “Endless Fairways Golf Package” at Hilton Waikoloa Village on Hawaii’s Big Island depended on the class of room and number of golfers. Either way, you would save.

For a king lanai golf-view room from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2, the package was $354 a night for one golfer and $454 for two. Essentially, the hotel added $100 per golfer to the “best available rate” of $254. The nonrefundable “Net Direct Rate” was even less, $234. Because greens fees, bought separately, were $130 per guest, you would save $30, or $60 per room, depending on the number of golfers.

Math class: The $299 “Back to School” special at Estancia La Jolla Hotel & Spa included a $50 certificate for Office Depot to buy school supplies.

Compared with buying the room and certificate separately, with the “best available rate” of $259 per night for Sept. 29 to 30, you would save $10 per night with the package; with the AAA rate of $249, you’d save nothing.

Romancing the wallet: Packages for couples are complex, often eluding price comparisons.

At Four Seasons Hotel New York, the price of “Romance and Style” for Sept. 29 to 30 was $755 per night, including a Superior Room, a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Champagne, “assorted covered strawberries,” breakfast for two and food and beverage taxes.

I couldn’t price the strawberries, but with the French wine retailing for about $42 and up, I figured you’d save at least $46, plus taxes (and those strawberries) versus booking the $675 weekend rate and buying everything separately.

Estancia’s “Romance and Rendezvous” package, with an Estate King room, offered sparkling wine, chocolates, a couples massage and breakfast for two for $639 per night.

I couldn’t price the chocolates, and the front-desk clerk couldn’t price the wine. The other items, with the room, would total $584.90, if bought separately.

Lesson No. 3: It’s hard to put a price on romance. You may just have to take the plunge.

Savings on the fly: The most reliable way to get a deal on a hotel and airfare may be to buy them together in a package.

Depending on the destination, said Travelocity’s Ziff, winter-holiday packages this year cost $200 to $500 less, on average, than buying airfare and lodging separately.

You can find such packages through a travel agent or online at www.expedia.com, www.orbitz.com, www.travelocity.com and www.site59.com.

Because packages help companies conceal exact discounts, airlines and hotels are willing to give bigger ones, Ziff explained.

Searching Travelocity, for instance, I found a three-night, air-hotel package from Sept. 29 to Oct. 1 for the Hilton Waikoloa Village, from LAX, that totaled $1,336.83 for two, including taxes and fees.

Priced separately on the Hilton and American Airlines websites, the same itinerary totaled $2,052.10. The savings: $715.27, or nearly 36%.

Bargains like that keep travelers searching -- and researching.

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jane.engle@latimes.com