Do Travel Packages Actually Save You Money? We Put Walmart+ Travel to the Test

Some myths stick around for decades, like “wait 30 minutes after eating to swim" or “you’ll catch a cold if you go outside with wet hair." But what about the age-old travel wisdom that says it’s always cheaper to book your flight and hotel together?

That’s exactly what we set out to test with Walmart+ Travel’s package tool, which lets you bundle flights, hotels, and rental cars all at once. Sounds smart. Sounds efficient. But does it actually save you money — or just save you from clicking a few extra tabs?

We crunched the numbers, tracked the Walmart Cash, and even included a Roman luxury hotel for dramatic flair. Here’s what really happens when you try to package your way to paradise.

How to Book Packages with Walmart+ Travel

First things first: On the Walmart+ Travel home page, click on “Packages." (Self-explanatory, right?) Then select which items you want to bundle:

• Flight, hotel, and car
• Flight and hotel
• Flight and car
• Hotel and car

Enter the dates you want to bundle them and click the search button. You’ll see a plethora of options, but clicking the “Sort by" button field can help you organize them by price, rating, and other factors:

How We Set Up Our Test

For our test, we opted for a 12-day trip from Los Angeles to Rome for a single traveler. (Are we really heading to Rome for 12 days? No, but a girl can dream.)

We sorted the results by “package discount," hoping to find the best deal. The top result was Hotel Splendide Royal, only 10 minutes away from the Colosseum. Together with the flight, our stay in a nonrefundable queen-bed room would cost $10,580 — a splurge-tastic amount, to be sure, but still far cheaper than the $17,894 Walmart+ Travel claimed it would cost to book the flight and hotel individually.

So, bundling would save us $7,313. (We’ll investigate that claim further in a moment.) Additionally, there’s Walmart Cash to be earned on this purchase — 2% on the airfare and 5% for the hotel, adding up to $506.17.

The price went up by thousands of dollars when we made modifications like selecting a king bed or two twin beds — so, you might want to stick with Walmart+ Travel’s default.

We went back to the queen bed for the original $10,580 price, but upgraded our flight from Economy Light to Economy Classic (one checked bag, please). This brought our total to $10,714, a discount of $7,406 in “package savings." Was it, though…?

Now Let’s Book Everything Separately

It was time to start over and look up the same exact hotel and flight on their own. The nonrefundable Hotel Splendide Royal queen-bed room by itself would cost $12,158 — more than the entire package deal.

The flight by itself would cost over $799. Together, the hotel and flight — booked separately — would set us back a whopping $12,957.31. So, packaging does appear to save travelers significant money.

Final Thoughts

You might not need to wait 30 minutes after eating to swim. You might not catch a cold if you go outside with wet hair. But it seems you might want to book your flight and hotel together.

However, we can’t ignore that Walmart+ Travel said we’d save $7,406 by going with the package. In reality, we saved $2,243.30. (OK, not in reality-reality, since we didn’t go to Rome, but you get the idea.) How did they calculate the big figure? We have no idea.

What we can say for sure is you’ll want to sort your Walmart+ Travel search results by “package discount" — because without this filter, the bundled savings in our tests were far more modest; one itinerary yielded a mere savings of $15, barely enough to buy a sandwich at the airport.

Another certainty: By choosing a Walmart+ Travel package, you’re receiving a lot of money back in Walmart Cash — over $500 in our case, which would cover plenty of gelato and pizza from the freezer aisle. That’s as close to Rome as we’ll get for now.