How budget-friendly is a last-minute Labor Day trip to Honolulu?

Hotel occupancy throughout Hawaii has hit record lows, so it’s no surprise that Honolulu has beds aplenty available for the soon-to-arrive long weekend that will represent the last hurrah of summer.

Orbitz.com has ranked Honolulu as No. 4 in its list of top Labor Day weekend destinations (following Las Vegas, New York City and Cancun). With daily average hotel rates around $111, according to Orbitz’s figures, the Hawaiian capital boasts particularly great value in this economically downtrodden time.

I sniffed around to see what prices were looking like for a long weekend in Honolulu. I knew that I was likely to find greater savings with a flight-hotel package than with booking each component on my own, but I was curious how substantial the difference would be for the holiday weekend. And, though hotel rates are low, what about last-minute flights?

Booking separately

On CheapTickets, for the roughly 5 1/2-hour flight between LAX and HNL, one of the cheapest nonstop round-trips I could find was $741 per person, including taxes. That’s for a departure early Friday evening, arriving back in Los Angeles late Monday night.

That’s nothing like the $419-ish rates for fall travel that I’ve been seeing, but this is a holiday weekend that we’re researching, after all, so expecting a bargain-basement find is probably  unreasonable. A search utilizing Orbitz’s “flex-search” tool will show you that you will save a fair bit if you leave on a day other than Friday and return on a day other than Monday.

But we’ll stick with the Friday-to-Monday schedule, for this experiment’s sake. If you look at the hotel-air packages available, Castle Maile Sky Court — a high-rise three blocks from Waikiki Beach that seems to get generally positive reviews among travelers who are OK with a no-frills  budget place — consistently pops up as one of the cheapest alternatives. The hotel’s current Internet special results in a three-night stay costing $217 total, including taxes. Add that to those CheapTickets flights and you get $1,699 for flights and hotel for two people, or about $850 per person.

If you’re going to go for a hotel with a higher nightly rate (like the aforementioned $111-per-night Orbitz estimate), you’ll naturally spend more, in the realm of $1,815 for flights and a room for two people, or about $908 per person based on double occupancy.

Flight + hotel packages

Now, let’s have a look at packages. I searched a few different booking sites (including Priceline and Travelocity), but one of the best values I found with packages including reasonably timed nonstop flights was on Expedia: With a stay at Castle Maile Sky Court, I found a package for $830 per person (again, based on double occupancy). The flight departs LAX early Friday evening and arrives back on Monday night.

That, obviously, makes the package route the more attractive option for the bank account — but not by much. If you’ve got specific needs regarding flight times, the savings potential may be compromised. If you’re counting every dollar, you might still want to do some comparisons on your own. But if you’re pressed for time in planning, you can feel assured that at least you won’t be spending more by going the package route.

– Susan Derby, Special to The Times

Photo: You’ll find surfers of all sizes on Waikiki Beach. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 23, 2009 at 12:24 pm by Susan Derby and is filed under Airline travel, Deals, Hawaii, Hotels, Islands & Beaches, Last Minute, Oahu. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.