I love Costco. It’s been a great way for me to save money on household essentials like toilet paper, chicken nuggets, and strawberries. My husband and I also always buy our gas at Costco, and we’ve bought tires for our car there before, too. The savings on gas alone more than make up for the membership cost, in my opinion.
But one part of Costco that I’d never even heard about until lately was its travel arm. Turns out, it’s a fairly big operation. Costco recently reported in its earnings call that Costco Travel booked over $100 million in gross bookings just in the five days after Thanksgiving this year.
You can book things like vacation packages that include flights, hotels, and rental cars, cruises, or just parts of a travel experience. And like most things at Costco, it’s advertised as being a deal.
But should you use Costco Travel to book your next family vacation or trip away from the kids? Is it actually a better deal? Here are some of the pros and cons you should consider, as well as what I found comparing different trips on Costco Travel’s website.
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How does Costco Travel work?
There is no physical Costco Travel office. You can book directly through their website, or you can call and talk to one of their travel agents to plan your trip.
You have to have a Costco membership to use the travel services, and you’ll be asked to provide your membership number when you make your booking. If you’ve got the Executive Membership, you’ll automatically get 2% back on every travel booking.
Pros of using Costco Travel
If you’re thinking about using Costco Travel for your next trip, there are a few reasons why so many people rave about it.
One-stop shop for bookings
I find booking vacations to be extremely overwhelming. There are simply too many choices to figure out, so I really like that it’s possible to book everything you’ll need for your vacation from one central source. Fewer options are better for someone like me, and having one place to go back to for the itinerary seems helpful, too.
Helpful customer support
Several people in various Reddit threads said they also liked being able to call the customer support line for help with their bookings, like this Reddit user‘s Costco Travel review, who called for support booking a complex vacation.
Costco travel can save you money and add perks
One of the biggest reasons to book with Costco Travel is the potential to save money. Sometimes Costco is able to negotiate better rates with hotels or vacation packages. Sometimes, though, the price is the same, but Costco adds additional perks and benefits.
I played around with what it would look like to book a Disney cruise for later this year, and found that the price was exactly the same as on Disney’s website. However, I would have gotten a $350 Costco shopping card by booking through Costco Travel. While not actual cash, that’s a substantial perk just by booking through a different site. Other perks I saw included things like complimentary room upgrades, waived resort fees, and early and late checkout. One hotel in New York City had a late checkout time of 3 p.m. through Costco Travel.
When I priced out a Sonoma wine country couples trip my husband and I could take later this year, Costco Travel would have saved us over $1,000 for the trip and included a major deal on the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn, an upscale hotel in Sonoma.
I also looked at a ski vacation to Whistler for the family and found that the Costco Travel package with hotel and rental car would be less than just the room itself booking directly. Adding a rental car on top of that would make the final savings even more.
Cons of using Costco Travel
Nothing is perfect, and I did find a few potential cons of using Costco Travel to book your next trip.
Not as much opportunity for trip customization
If you are booking a trip on your own, you have full control over how many nights you stay and when you go. With Costco Travel, this isn’t always the case. Certain deals are only available if you stay a particular minimum of nights or travel between certain dates, which may not fit your travel plans.
Visiting Italy has been on my list for a few years, so I took a look at one of the vacation deals Costco Travel offers, but didn’t like that the trip required at least nine nights. If we only wanted to do two nights in Rome and three in Florence, as an example, we wouldn’t be able to do this.
The site offers a lot of Disney vacation packages, but in order to get the deals, many of the packages require a five-night stay or more, which could be a frustrating condition. You also won’t get any help with a park itinerary or park do’s and dont’s like you would with a Disney planner, so I’m not sure I’d use Costco to book a Disney trip unless I felt like I knew the parks well.
You likely won’t earn reward or status points using Costco Travel
One of the major pain points I heard when surfing various threads about Costco Travel is that you may not earn travel loyalty rewards or status points by booking your hotel through them. This is the same for when you book through other third-party booking companies, like Kayak, but still a disappointing part of using Costco Travel.
If you want to get airline rewards program credit, you can visit the carrier’s website after booking and add your frequent flier miles, so you’ll at least earn some rewards. It’s an extra step to take, which defeats the ‘one-stop-shopping’ allure of using Costco Travel to begin with.
It’s hard to tell if you’re getting a great deal or not on Costco Travel
The assumption is that you’ll save money booking through Costco Travel because, well, it’s Costco. But in order to make sure you’re actually getting a deal, you’ll have to do the legwork to compare prices across different sites. As a busy mom, I’m not really keen on adding more work to my plate.
Take the wine country trip I was playing around with. I had to individually go to the airline, hotel, and rental car websites and then ensure I was booking the exact same thing in the Costco package. And for the Disney cruise, I had to make sure I was selecting the same stateroom to see if the pricing was different.
From what I searched, it did seem like Costco Travel was a better deal. Even with the cruise scenario that was the same price, Costco Travel provided an additional value. That said, it would be harder and much more time-intensive to try to price out and match some of the multi-day, multi-stop European vacations.
I think you’d need to trust that the site will save you money. If not, the amount of time you’ll spend trying to verify if the pricing is better seems like it would reduce the value of using the service.
The bottom line on Costco Travel
Yes, Costco Travel seems to deliver on deals. That said, you won’t get the same customization opportunities or itinerary tips that you would using a travel agent or Disney planner. If your trip doesn’t require a ton of additional planning around activities or tours, or if you’re generally a go-with-the-flow type of person, Costco Travel would be a great way to save money. But if you want a bit more hand-holding to plan your vacation, you may want to stick with having help to book, even if it means slightly higher prices.
I was definitely surprised by the hotel rates the site had, and will definitely have Costco Travel at the forefront of my mind when booking travel this year. At this point, what can’t you save money on at Costco?
Elliott Harrell, Contributing Writer
Elliott is a mom of two little girls and is based in Raleigh, NC. She spends her days running a sales team and doing laundry and her nights writing about the things that she loves. She’s passionate about all things motherhood and women’s health. When she’s not working, writing, or parenting, you can find her trying a new restaurant in town or working on her latest needlepoint project.
Images in feature graphics credited to Elevae Visuals and Costco Travel
