My husband and I are planning our first trip to Paris in early November (2001). We have passports and itinerary done but just need to book the flight and hotel. Do you think we should use one of those "package deals" that includes both or book the flight and hotel separately via priceline.com or something like that? <BR> <BR>Thanks in advance for any suggestions. The e-mail address above is bogus, so I can only receive messages via the board

If you have your itinerary already, then a package deal probably won't help you much unless they provide just air and hotel - United Vacations is having some kind of special I believe where you get bonus miles. <BR> <BR>I personally would book separately first to see what type of $$ it would be (I would NOT use priceline - too inflexible, too unreliable!). You can book hotels that are &lt;$100 per night in Paris - most packages will be over that. Have a great time.

I would also suggest that if you are looking at package tours, make sure that you do some research on the hotels that are offered. You'll find that the hotels offered are often not in the best locations (e.g., too far out of the central city), or are less than charming for other reasons.

For our first trip to Paris, we booked a Trafalgar package that included hotel with breakfast, airport transfers, a half day bus tour of Paris and a half day bus tour with guided visit to Versailles. Oh, and a really ugly free tote bag. We booked the airline tickets separately. It was a fairly good deal (they get group rates at hotels), but you can do better making all those arrangements yourself, especially now that one can shop hotels (and get excellent advice in a forum such as this one) and book rooms online. There's an online service called "The French Experience" many people have used without complaint. When you add everything up (some of which you won't get around to using/doing), it comes out just about the same as doing it yourself, and you don't have to prepay when making your own arrangements. Here's another caution about using Priceline for airline tickets. BE SURE to read all the rules several times. Particularly with regard to number of connections and flight times. Some find the savings worth leaving home at 4AM, making two connections, and spending nearly 24 hours to get there when a direct flight or just one connection means many fewer tiresome hours in airports and on planes - I don't.

Personnaly, I'd recommend booking seperately. A travel agent can help of course, but if I were you I'd get a good guide book recommending hotels in my price range. There are excellent budget guides like Cheap Sleeps Rick Steves guides. Fodor's guides have hotels from all price ranges. With almost everything on the web now you can see rooms in advance and book. Of course you can also search this sight. There are several postings on Paris hotels every week.

Recommend you look at the Karen Brown books on France. Her descriptions of hotels are very accurate. We stayed at the Jeu d'Paume Hotel on Ile St. Louis. Small room, small bathroom but a perfect Paris experience on an island in the Seine that seemed like a village unto itself.

You should be able to get very good deals for an early Nov trip, espec on air faire. It may depend on where you need to fly from, if it's a major gateway like NYC, French Experience does have a wide variety of hotel choices and very good deals from what I've seen (or maybe New Frontiers, both are in NY). Your don't state it directly, but it sounds like your question is in reference to saving money. Because if you aren't saving money (and some packages are no different than booking yourself, some do get room rates at a discount), there is no point to a package as you still have to research the hotels to make sure you like it. So, I'd probably book myself or use one of those independent tours like Trafalgar if you want more aid, as I think those kind of packages at least include a local guide/host or whatever who is usually at your hotel some time or can be used to ask questions on things and give advice, and they often include a firstday city bus tour which is nice to have without having to make arrangements yourself. If you don't want that extra stuff, you'll have to compare all the prices anyway of packages versus doing it yourself. I wasn't aware Priceline had hotels in Europe, but I would never use them for airfare myself as I don't like surprises. I have certain airlines I prefer and I won't do anything but nonstop myself, if it's available, but that's up to you. For a neophyte, I would not recommend bidding for airline/hotel rooms in a market you do not know well, as you may end up paying more than normal and wasting a lot of time versus doing it normally. there is really no need for that, there are great airfare deals for flights to Europe in November and many reasonable hotels in Paris through normal channels--I don't think small budget hotels in Paris would be participating on those auction boards, only the large, expensive chain hotels will be. Actually, I don't know of any auction site that has European hotels, do you know of one?

Luxurylinks.com had auctions on european hotels, but just the really pricey ones.

Macno, <BR>We made a trip to Paris in January, 2001. Bought an air, hotel w/breakfast package on the internet at www.francevacations.net. The price was very good. They have a wide variety of hotels available at various prices. We stayed at Hotel St. Paul [Rue Monsinoir(sp?) le Prince, 6th] and were very happy with the location, room, breakfast, and the hotel cat & dog.

Go-today.com has gotten a number of favorable comments on this board. <BR> <BR>Bon Voyage

Try www.digital.france.com <BR> <BR>We made our hotel reservations as well as shuttle to and from the airport at this site. We really like it because there are comments posted for each hotel by people who have stayed at the hotels. We're going in September and will be staying at the le Clemente in the 6th. <BR> <BR>We booked our flights through our travel agent...our agent really didn't want to mess with the hotel stuff...and the rates were not as good with the agency either - on-line prices were better.

Thanks for all the responses! You've given me some direction - which is really what I needed. I didn't think I'd save money on a package deal, I just thought it would be simpler. I think we will book the flight and hotel separately. We don't want "free" tours that aren't on our itinerary. We prefer to do our own thing when vacationing. <BR> <BR>Great forum!