Packages were once a dominant source for air and lodging discounts to popular vacation destinations. The bulk discounts that travel sellers could get from buying large quantities of hotel rooms and airfare were a longtime source of deep savings for travelers.
But in the summer of 2025, American Express abruptly stopped selling pre-packaged vacations.
AmEx will still partner with Expedia Group, which used to handle this segment of its business, but from now on, AmEx customers will use Expedia’s tech to select their own flights and hotels rather than choose from the discounts that have been put together for them.
American Express hasn’t given a reason for abandoning what had historically been an important mode of its travel business, but it’s not the only air-hotel package vendor to get out of the game in recent years. Go-Today.com, once a leading seller of air-hotel discounts, bowed out in 2022.
Why are air-hotel discount package deals vanishing?
The decline of charter flights, which used to power cheap vacation packagers such as Apple Vacations and Vacation Express, was one of the first industry changes to undermine discount vacation packages. As more packagers began using scheduled flights, their power to negotiate cheaper airfare declined.
It’s thought that another reason pre-set travel package offerings are fading away is that sellers are reducing what they spend on negotiating their own travel deals so they can drive more customers to use booking engines handled by partners.
Societal and economic factors figure into the shift, too.
“We’re seeing a perfect storm in the decline of hotel-and-air packages for U.S. travelers,” says Dr. Richie Karaburun, Clinical Associate Professor of Hospitality and Tourism at New York University. “Economic pressures, reduced international tourism, and the growing expectation for hyper-personalized itineraries are all playing a role. Today’s travelers want the freedom to mix and match flights, hotels, and experiences to suit their exact preferences.”
The number and variety of companies that competed for packaging business has also diminished. There are fewer players negotiating for bulk discount prices. For example, since the heyday of the travel package, Expedia Group has gobbled up other sellers Travelocity, Hotwire, Orbitz, CheapTickets, and Trivago, and many of those vendors now share a common inventory system.
Frequent flyer points redemption, which has been fueled by the popularity of branded credit cards, has also triggered the general decline of pre-packaged vacations. Many hotel companies and airlines now de-prioritize purchases made through third-party sellers, which include discounted air-hotel bundles, by making them ineligible for loyalty points.
“More people are using loyalty points to book each element separately, which makes the traditional bundled package less appealing than ever,” says Karaburun.
Are air-hotel packages cheaper than buying à la carte?
In the past, air-hotel packages could often save customers hundreds of dollars off a vacation compared to assembling it independently.
Is that still the case? We ran a few pricing experiments, and the results were fairly consistent.
On Expedia (which Mastercard still uses for some bundled packages), an airfare and hotel package flying out of JFK on 8 September, and staying 3 nights at the Intercontinental Presidente Cancun Resort by IHG, currently costs $690 per traveler, or $1,380 for a couple.
Book the same components individually and the cheapest airfare we could find for the same route comes in at $318 per person ($636 per couple). Add accommodation into the mix—3 nights, again at the Intercontinental Presidente—and we found the rate added $261 per night to our vacation's cost (so $783 for three nights in total).
This made for the self-booked total $1,419 per couple. That was slightly more expensive than the pre-bundled package, but only by $39.
Experts believe that for many vacationers, small added costs are regarded as a small price to pay for having greater control of the various components of a trip—and for being sure that they’ll be able to earn points for the purchases.
“The old appeal of a bundled deal—easy planning and value—is still there, but travelers increasingly want to mix and match flights, hotels, car rentals, and experiences themselves, creating a trip tailored to their needs,” says Dr. Karaburun at NYU.
What vacations still have cheap air-hotel package deals?
When it comes to bundled packages, mass appeal matters. Customers won’t find the biggest savings for bucket list destinations like Fiji or long multi-week trips to Europe, but they might for vacations to the Caribbean and Mexico, and for shorter holidays.
“Tourism research has found that destinations popular for shorter vacation stays of 3 to 7 days and air flight times of 3 to 5 hours seem to do very well when it comes to combined airfare and hotel packages,” says Professor Jerry Agrusa at the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s School of Travel Industry Management.
In other words, you’re more likely to find a truly money-saving air-hotel package for the most popular destinations over quicker breaks.
However, if you’re willing to do the research and travel outside of peak times, booking individual components for long-haul breaks of more than a week doesn’t necessarily need to cost significantly more, and we found the proof.
Currently, Expedia offers an 8-night hotel and flights package, flying from Orlando to Paris and staying at the Citizen M Paris Gare de Lyon, for $1,389 per person ($2,056 per couple).
It’s worth noting the Citizen M Paris Gare de Lyon is on the Marriott Bonvoy points system, and since Expedia is a third-party vendor, booking a room through it won’t allow customers to earn Bonvoy points.
Booking the same vacation independently, we found flights from Orlando to Paris for $577 per person ($1,154 per couple) and nightly rates for the Citizen M Paris Gare de Lyon for $133 a night, adding $1,064 to the total bill for those taking a DIY route.
Once again, booking the components individually resulted in a total price that wasn’t far from the pre-packaged one. Booking on your own would cost $2,218 per couple—just $162 more than the officially bundled package. To some vacationers, the ability to earn Bonvoy points may be worth the extra $162.
In summary? In an era when hotels and airlines are rolling out bigger and better loyalty schemes and going all out to woo travelers with flexible booking policies, choosing a pre-bundled package of hotel and airfare is no longer a guaranteed money-saver.
This is especially true for vacationers willing to do legwork. As hotels offer great deals for members of their loyalty schemes and vacationers become more used to departing from alternate airports to save extra money, the bulk discounts that used to set air-hotel packagers apart are being matched, more or less, by savings you can cobble together in other ways.
Even if you have to pay a few bucks more, many vacationers find that’s a small price to pay for the ability to personalize all aspects of a trip.
And so go the mega-deals you could once find through pre-arranged air-hotel bundles.