How To Take a Cheap Hawaii Vacation

Now, by cheap Hawaii vacation, I mean an inexpensive vacation – but NOT lacking in any way. Basically, how can you MAXIMIZE how far your dollar goes getting to and vacationing in Hawaii, but still have in incredible time and still see and do everything you want to see and do.

Well, there are a few strategies I’d like to discuss here. You can consider just one or mix and match for maximum savings.

1: Travel to Oahu for the Island with the Best Savings Options
2: Consider camping or alternative accomodations for some or all of your trip
3: Bid on Priceline for best prices
4: Shop by vacation package – instead of picking your island and hotel and airline, just look at vacation packages for the best price in the class you want.
5: Know How to get the best price on airline tickets.

1: Travel to Oahu for the Island with the Best Savings Options

Oahu is the island with the most people and the most traffic and the most visitors. It has managed to become quite commercialized, however, the beauty of the island is still totally evident. The beaches are amazing and the choices of activities on this island are vast.

Because there are so many hotels and so many boats and surfing instructors and rental places competing for your dollar, you can find many cheap prices here.

Plus, because the island has a great bus system and so many shuttle companies, you may not need to rent a car if you are staying in Waikiki (actually it’s good if you don’t – some hotels want $20 a day or more for parking).

One activity savings option is the Go Oahu Card (link is to my review), where you purchase a card that gets you in to as many allowed activities as you can do in one day. It’s really good for very active vacationers – those who can do 2 to 3 activities a day. I’ve done the math and it could save someone who is active definite money.

I think that if a person or couple or family planned a vacation just right, they could get away with a couple of days of lounging Waikiki Beach and doing Waikiki Activities, then the next day they could do a close activity like Hanauma Bay or Pearl Harbor where they could get a shuttle, and the next day rent a car (just for the day or just by the day at their hotel) and get the Go Oahu card for a day or a few days and do as many activities as they could get to in that time and keep their activity budget low while still doing tons of stuff.

One more Savings Option that I like to recommend is the Entertainment Book (link is to my review). The Entertainment book offers savings on all the islands, but the most coupons are for Oahu, by far. There are literally thousands of dollars worth of savings on Fine dining, casual dining, and activities. To save on dining with the entertainment book though, you do need to be traveling with someone else because most of the offers are buy one, get one free.

Consider camping or alternative accomodations for some or all of your trip

Your hotel is going to be your biggest or your second biggest expense (competing with airfare). If you LIKE to camp, you could consider camping for some or all of your trip. Camping in Hawaii can be tricky because of permits and because many county campgrounds shut down completely for one night, but many people do it, and you can make it easy by choosing a private campground. One of the best is Malaekahana Campgrounds.

Also, there is very little equipment to rent here – you’ll have to bring most or all of your gear or buy it when you get here if you are going to camp if your campground does not provide it.

Camping on Oahu, Camping on the Big Island, camping on Kauai, camping on Maui.

As for alternative accomodations; there are hostels and YMCAs for those who like those kinds of accomodations.

Bid on Priceline for best price discounts

Hotwire and priceline are both in the discount travel game, but I have the most experience with Priceline, so that’s who I recommend most. My friend Cindy says Hotwire is really good for last minute savings.

Priceline can also work for last minute savings, and also seems to me to be really effective when hotels have unsold rooms and airlines have unsold seats. Many people recommend naming your own price and starting at 50% of what you would normally pay – so if you are seeing flights to Hawaii from $500 for your area, you could try naming your own price at $250 and bid up from there.

I am not a priceline expert, but I have used them for my own personal travel with good results for hotels and cars. I have also bid on them and had my bids denied more than once. I will refer you to the Bidding for Travel Forum for expert advice. The Hawaii forums are halfway down the page. I also talk a bit about bidding on Hawaii hotel rooms at priceline here.

Shop by vacation package

Instead of picking your island and hotel and airline, just look at vacation packages for the best price in the class you want.

Ok, so what you would do is head over to Expedia (you can use anyone, but expedia is my personal favorite) and Click on Vacation Pakcages in the top blue bar next to Home.

Search around a bit and see what is available. I searched for LAX to HNL in late February and got the Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort and Spa Hotel and Airfare for $902 per person for 7 days. Nice. Total package price for two people is $1803. The notes under the hotel read “Hotel promotion – Special discount on Partial Ocean View”. Wow, even nicer.

If I head over to flights (you don’t need to do this, I just like to see the math) and search for just flights, I get a per person price of $365 for that flight, so a total flight price of $730, which means the hotel is costing $1073 for the 7 nights, which is about $153 a night.

If I go to hotels and search for that partial ocean I get an on-sale $179 a night, which doesn’t include taxes and service fees, but when searching by vacation package, it DID include taxes and fees. So, the difference is $26 a night, which works out to $182 for the seven days I searched for. If we can assume taxes and fees will be another $100+ (which they will be), then this package deal has instantly saved $300.

Now, I didn’t have to do all that math – when I searched for vacation packages it told me in the search results that booking the hotel and flight together would save me $300. I just like to do the math to be sure they are telling the truth .

So, if you do book your car also, you can trust what the expedia engine says, in this case, that you would save $351 by booking them all together. The total price with an economy car came out to $1974, which would mean the car for 7 days cost $171, or about $24 a day. Not a phenomenal price, but not bad either.

Oh, and I also recommend checking package sites like Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays and Hawaiian Airlines, as sometimes they have good deals on specific locations that can save you tons of money.

Now, One more thing you can try, that maybe can get you the best deal possible, is at Expedia, click on Deals and Offers in the tabs across the top.

In deals and offers, you can search by destination, so click on Oahu or Maui or whereever you are looking to vacation at and Expedia will bring up all their current specials. You can see what hotels are currently offering deals and what the average rate per night will be. You can see the rate calendar, which would tell you what days the rates are generally lower.

Know you are getting the best price on your airline tickets

There is a whole strategy and science to getting the best price on your airline tickets, because the prices are never static. If you really want to KNOW how to be SURE you are getting the best price, head over to my page Cheap Flights to Hawaii in July and read about the strategy. The numbers in there are for july, but the strategy will work for any month or time of the year. Once you know it, you will have a much better chance of getting a good price.