Are Super Bowl vacation packages travel deals or not?

One of the things you learn when you start researching the subject is that as maligned as the “vacation package” can be among people who consider themselves hard-core budget travelers, a package deal can often mean huge savings over booking each element separately. Of course, this isn’t always true, but it’s true often enough that it’s always worth looking for vacation package deals to the places you’re planning to visit as you’re looking up airfare and hotel prices.

But let’s take the Super Bowl as an example of a big event for which there are plenty of vacation packages being offered. Are they a better deal than booking a la carte? Will you save money with Super Bowl vacation packages?

The short answer is - sometimes. But there are enough cases where a vacation package is so much more costly than booking your flight, hotel, and car rental separately that it’s critical you do your homework in this case instead of just assuming the package “deal” is really a deal. Here are some of the things to keep in mind when you’re looking at Super Bowl vacation packages vs. booking your Super Bowl trip piece by piece.

If you take no other advice from this article, take this advice: do the math.

I am no fan of math. I avoid it as often as possible. But this is one case where I’d dust off my calculator and sharpen a pencil or two, and I’d highly recommend you do the same.

How do you know if a vacation package is really a deal? Do you take their word for it? If the people trying to sell you the package tell you you’re saving money, do you just believe them? No, you don’t. Well, you don’t if you’re a bargain hunter. You figure out exactly what the price breakdown is for the things they’re including in their package, and then you compare it with the prices on those things booked individually.

This means you’ll need to look up the cost of flights to Miami in a booking engine (like the one on this website), then do the same for hotels. Compare that total cost to the cost of the vacation package, and you’ll be able to tell pretty quickly whether it’s a deal or not.

You may be able to find much better deals on airfare by doing something as simple as choosing a different airport to fly into rather than Miami International Airport, or by choosing a hotel that’s a little further from the Super Bowl venue itself. And if things like that save you big bucks, then the vacation package may pale in comparison.

In order to do the math, you need to know what’s included.

When you’re comparing any Super Bowl vacation packages you’re looking at with a la carte booking, it’s important to know whether you’re comparing apples with apples. Many of the packages I found when researching this article included much more than just airfare to Miami and a couple nights in a hotel - there were things like car rentals or transportation to and from the game, tickets to the game, Super Bowl souvenirs, and even cocktail parties with NFL stars.

Now, all of that sounds fun, and it would certainly make for a memorable trip. But true budget travelers are probably asking themselves, “Wait, do I need all of that?” If your intent is to go to Miami to see the Super Bowl, then your expenses will include airfare, hotel, and tickets to the game - and perhaps not much else. So why fork over all that money on a bunch of extras that you don’t really need?

But even if the vacation packages you’re looking at don’t include all the bells and whistles, be sure to find out what they do include - and also what they don’t. This is the information you’ll need when you’re wisely doing the math as instructed above.

photo by Sienar