Deal or no deal?: Florida hotel discounts from SWA

I’ve flown Southwest Airlines more times than I can count. Sometimes I’ve saved a lot of money with SWA, but other times only a little. So, I thought I’d investigate some of SWA’s current Florida hotel promotions while planning my next cross-country trip. After all, who can resist a room on Deco Drive in South Beach advertised from just $79/night?

Deal or No Deal?: As attractive as the SWA hotel deals looked, none of the ones I checked out saved me any money. For example, the cheapest rate I could find for the art-deco WinterHaven Hotel South Beach while booking on SWA.com was $79/night, excluding taxes and fees. When I visited the hotel’s own website, I got the same room for just $71/night. I also experimented with booking a popular pre-cruise hotel in Hollywood, FL, the Comfort Inn Airport/Cruise Port South. The best deal that SWA.com offered me was $76.49/night, while the hotel website quoted an Internet rate of just $72.19/night, excluding taxes and fees.

Which airline websites offer the best hotel deals? Tell us by posting in the Comments section below.

Why Go: Sometimes airlines offer bonus frequent-flyer miles for booking hotels through their own website, which may make it worth it, even if the room rates are a bit higher than you’d pay elsewhere.

Why Not: Booking your room via a 3rd-party agent (e.g., an airline, an online travel discounter) instead of directly through the hotel always means taking a small risk that things won’t work out exactly as planned.

Critique: Does anyone else remember the days when discount airlines really had the lowest fares? Now, you’ve got to spend extra time shopping around every time you buy a ticket.

Contact: WinterHaven South Beach Hotel, (305) 531-5571, (800) 553-7739
Comfort Inn Airport/Cruise Port South, (954) 922-1600

Related Los Angeles Times links:
Air travel: Get ready to be bumped this summer
Miami summer grooves, July 11th–15th
Florida & Caribbean: Book a vacation now, pay later

– Sara Benson, L.A. Times Travel Deal Detective

[Photo credit: Courtesy of Comfort Inn Airport/Cruise Port South]

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 2:09 am by Sara Benson and is filed under East Coast, Frequent Flier, Islands & Beaches, Tours & Cruises. 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.