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My fiancée and I are planning a wedding in South America, and we'd like to make it as attractive and hassle-free as possible for our American guests to attend. To get them excited about the wedding, we'd like to offer guests some kind of travel package that includes:

  • flight to wedding destination
  • hotel at wedding destination
  • flight to resort destination
  • hotel for resort destination
  • flight back home

Ideally, guests could just pay one lump sum of money and not worry about any of the booking details themselves. In the interest of cost, I've heard that some hotels/airlines can take group bookings at cheaper rates, but I have no idea how this stuff works. Is creating a package like this reasonable? Is this something that we have to take care of ourselves, or are there services out there than can help us out with this?

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  • Maybe a travel agency can help with that. You might evenaskquotes to more than one.
    – nsn
    Commented Jun 8, 2014 at 22:49
  • What kind of travel agency? Would it have to be one based at the main destination? We talked to a few travel agencies in South America on the last visit and they all seemed kinda puzzled at the question; they seemed to be more focused on selling very specific packages to individuals or small groups. That is, they didn't seem very open to creating new packages for us.
    – giogadi
    Commented Jun 8, 2014 at 22:52
  • 2
    Ummm... that's puzzling. I don't know what kind of travling agent you talked to though. Any travelling agent at your own country should be able to do that. They have access to reservation systems for hotels and air-travel companies all over the world. They don't need to be based at the destiny. The fact that they are booking for a group might already give them advantage on price. Of course there are companies more focused on specific destinaions, meaning that they sell more to that place and get better rates. You should allways ask more than one quote.
    – nsn
    Commented Jun 8, 2014 at 22:53
  • @nsn I suppose the difficulty here is that the group size is not fixed yet.
    – Bernhard
    Commented Jun 9, 2014 at 6:05
  • @Bernhard yes, that definitly is a problem, but there you will have to come with a number you think it's reasonable yourself. I know it's not easy. The bigger that nr is the cheaper will be the trip, but in other hand the harder will be to get all people travelling (Although cheaper will also increase the probability that people go). I am not sure the travel agency will do it, but maybe you can ask them to give some tiers. (10-20 - X€, 20-40 - X€ - 10%)
    – nsn
    Commented Jun 9, 2014 at 7:56

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As a tour operator, my first advice is to skip the international airfare component, as the moment you tell everyone you have a deal on Delta, Uncle Joe will say he wants United for points and cousin Ellie will say she wants LAN to use her credit card points. Plus if they are starting in different cities, it becomes a nightmare. And group rates aren't any cheaper than discounted airfares.

Concentrate on the destination package, hotels, airport meet & greets, transfers, local flights, plus meals if you wish.

Two ways to go about it, contact your favorite travel agencies near home asking for some prices or go direct to an inbound agency at the destination. They both have pluses and minuses.

Your local travel agency will be more expensive as they need to add in something for their time and work, but they maybe easier for your guests to pay. The destination agency will be more economical and knowledgeable, but may require you to collect all payments and wire it or perhaps can accept direct credit card payments.

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