How to get the best deal (from Western Canada)

[kimandon]

We are thinking of booking a trip to Desire for our anniversary in Sept or October of 2009. This will be our first time at a C/O resort.

Generally speaking, how does one get the best price on a vacation at Desire, e.g. by booking through the hotel's website directly, going through a major travel website, or dealing with a tour operator directly. We are in Western Canada and normally find better deals by dealing with a tour operator like Signature Vacations, but they don't seem to deal with Desire resorts.

Any tips would be appreciated!

[CokeMann]

Kim&Don

We are from Toronto and our most recent trip, this August, was our 14th to Desire. In the past we have done both (ie booked direct and also thru agents) there is actually no saving to be had by booking direct so we have used DennyP Travel (in the USA) for our last 10 or more trips.

There are a couple of Canadian travel groups packaging Desire with air ( ie Sunwing is one of them - however what I've found is that what you save on the air part with them you lose out on the cost of the the Desire booking because they never pass on the available promo pricing that Desire usually has available - also they have only limited times of the year that they will actually price out a package for you.

Most of the Canadian Tour operators, Signature, Conquest, Sunwing, etc are looking for repeatable volume business to a given location/property - Desire is just too small and specialized to even get on their radar

Bottom line(from our perspective) is use DennyP for the Desire booking and then shop around on line for the air portion.

- Wayne


If you need some hints on getting good airfare deals - PM me on the forum with where you are located and I'll PM back some suggestions and tips

[Calcouple]

Kimanddon
We use Air canada vacations from Calgary to get down to Cancun or Jamaica. They seem to be within a couple of dollars of DennyP's price.

Nicole and Brian

[lyfsabeechatdesire]

Hi Kimanddon,

We too are from Western Canada, Alberta to be exact. We've been to Desire 2 times and are heading down for our 3rd time in December. The best rates we've received so far is booking our flights through Westjet and booking the hotel directly with Desire Resorts. Good luck - I'm sure you will LOVE Desire!!

Tammy