Are any of the advertised travel companies (priceline, expedia, orbitz etc) cheaper than the other? No one seems to have the flight that I want. I want to leave Houston (prefer Shreveport) in the very early morning so that we can reach the Bahamas early in the day (around 8-9 am). It is best (most affordable) to choose a package through someone Right?

There is really no way of telling who is going to have the best price without searching all of them for the time period you want. You might check sites like Travelzoo.com and Kayak.com. They can check multiple booking sites for you. Even Trip Advisor and Fodors sites has a search engine for multiple booking sites.

If you still can't find what you are looking for, check with a travel agent. My TA has in the past been able to find me deals and flights that I never saw on any booking site.

I have always found package deals to be cheaper from my departure point, but others may find booking hotel and air separtely to be a better deal. Again, it's something you'll just have to search out and see what fits your situation.

What is departure airport, destination airport and dates of travel? Someone might be able to point you in a good direction.

I've had very good luck with mobissimo.com. Like Kayak, it checks many site, but it seems to give results from sites that Kayak doesn't. Also, it allows you to check boxes to run comparison searches on other sites including Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Hotwire and Priceline. That should let you see most of the possibilities with just one stop.

I've never found a package to be cheaper than booking flight and hotel separately. In a package each person pays for the hotel along with their airfare. When you book the hotel separately you pay the same for one person or two, unless it's all inclusive. The way I figure it is the only way that would be feasible is for a single person booking. I like to use Orbitz's advanced search feature. It allowed me to search for flight prices in the entire time frame I could have traveled. That way I could see if I left on a Tuesday of a given month and came back on a Thursday two weeks later I was saving $200 per person on airfare. It also give you the option of getting emails from them when the fare drops below a certain amount.

Thank you so much for the helpful information. I will take all of it into consideration.