Best Place to find air & hotel packages to London from US
 

I am looking for suggestions on web sites to search for air & hotel packages to London from San Francisco, San Jose or Sacramento in December 04. Suggestions?

airlines, especially brit air.....

priceline is a good hotel source if you are familiar with it....study: www.biddingfortravel.com before doing anything on priceline...

You can find packages through expedia and other travel related sites. There is also gate1, octopustravel, and I used a package deal through tourcrafters last year to go to Rome. Frommer's budget travel (I have a magazine subscription) always lists good package deals...for example my October issue lists a 3nights in London and 3 nights in Paris with Eurostar rail connection included(for $679.00) through eurovacations.com. Remember that you can ask about adding days to the package to create a longer stay(for example a day would be lost traveling from London to Paris so I would add a day here). We added to our Rome stay and we still feel we got a great deal. Frommers also has some of the same packages on their website. You can also click on the buttons here on Fodors for land and air packages.

Britair currently has really cheap air fare ads on tv right now. (Under $200 out of SFO). I'm sure if you look at their site they will have packages too.

Be sure to compare the package price with what you could find by independently pricing flights and hotels to make sure you aren't overpaying on the package deal.

Addendum: Just want to make clear the $679 package deal I exampled above is for air and hotel, including the rail connection. The way it was written I made it look as if the Eurostar connection was worth $679.

note to self: preview my replies....

In addition to what has already been mentioned, you may also want to look at go-today.com and http://www.virgin-vacations.com It's amazing that some of these offer air & hotel for what you might expect to pay for air alone. Please do check that hotel locations when looking at these packages as the lower cost options are understandably located further from "center". Good luck!

Well, if you are looking for both hotel and air ticket packaged, Expedia will do it. But what happen if you can find the packaged hotel for a better price in another site? Thats why I reccomend you to stick for "Best price for each of things" Best price for Hotel can be found on one site, and best price for air ticket will be on another site.
If you are from US, try www.findlondonrooms.com and search for the best rates in London.
And if you still prefer to get a packaged tour, just check the prices of the hotel you've packaged with , on this site too. You'll see the prices are really cheap on many occassions.

we used Gotoday for our trip in March of this year - will definitely be using them again from Albany, NY, 4 nights it was less than $1000 for 2.

I have been looking for a similar package but won'ttbe going til next fall so I've just been kind of browsing to get some feel for what's out there. Did Expedia, then went to Trip Advisor and got several links there. It seems after awhile that many of the sites actually end up linking up to the same places and hotels. I also "googled" and got links that way....there are a zillion of them out there. The prices on many of then were really good. Hope they stay that way for next year. Good luck on your search, I'm sure something will come up that works for you.

I am almost afraid to say it, but we got a really good deal to London in March 02 and to Paris this year from our travel agent! I had been looking at packages on Go-Today and some other sites, and went to our TA who did just as well!

Radiofanatic, where did you go? And from Albany? (That's my stomping ground!)

Well, personally, for me, travel agent is NOT a dirty word and I have used them. I really have never shopped the internet and don't know that in the end I will do that. I find that it takes too much time to go back and forth to all these different sites. I was just going to check on a few things and was on the computer at about 10:00 in the morning and all of a sudden it was almost 2:00!!!! I think getting an idea of what is out there, and I WILL check again after the first of the year...will help me to know if the price or package I'm getting from my travel agent is a good one. Don't know yet how I'm going to book..will have to see when the time comes.

I've had fabulous luck with Priceline packages. We just returned from 8 nights in London with a Priceline package. Also got a room for ten nights in May with Priceline ($100/night at the Waldorf Hilton).

No matter how you book a package, it pays to check prices for air fares and hotels separately, so you'll know a good deal when you see one.

And, TripAdvisor.com is a terrific resource for hotel reviews.

Site59.com

Also Aer Lingus is offering some pretty cheap seats to London via SNN or DUB. Not the world's most comfortable seats, but cheap. Killer cheap business class fares at the moment, too.