Travel Deal of the Day (July 24, 2008)

When you are booking a reservation for multiple people, there are various reasons to consider booking each person in the party in separate reservations if you want to save money.

The Deal:
When you are booking a reservation for multiple people, always consider booking each person separately. Here are some reasons why:

(1) When a website or an airline reservation phone agent quotes a price for a group of people, the website/agent usually looks for a fare available for all of the people in the party. If the flight you request has only 2 seats at the lowest fare available, you will be quoted a higher price if your group has 3 or more people in it. But if you book each person separately, 2 of the people in the group will obtain the lowest fare. (If you are not going to book each person separately, at least check the price for 1, 2, 3…people when booking so you know if there are only a few seats left at the lowest fare.)

(2) Some airlines offer some sort of mileage bonus for booking on their websites. At least some of these websites only offer the bonus to one person per party – if you book each person separately, each party has only one person, so every person will receive the bonus.

(3) If a person in your group has a change of plans, that person can easily re-use their ticket for another reservation (for some fee – usually) and the rest of the people can easily fly on the original reservation. (If you happen to book multiple people in one reservation and it turns out you need to separate out one person from the reservation, that is usually possible by calling the airline.)

One other note – the downside to this suggestion relates to seat assignments. If a person has elite status, that person and often an additional companion have access to certain premium seats on some airlines. Most airlines require that companion to be in the same reservation – so, if each person books the reservation separately, you may lose out on this advantage. Also, when schedule changes occur, if multiple people are in the same reservation together, a computer will usually reassign seats close to each – but, if people are booked in separate reservations, the seats that are reassigned may not be next to each other. The easy solution to this problem is to check your reservations occasionally so that when schedule changes occur, you can obtain acceptable replacement seat assignments.

Overall, I think booking reservation separately has some definite perks. But it is up to you to weigh the advantages and disadvantages.