People are obsessed with booking their vacations through Costco — and now there are even more benefits by Mary Hanbury on Mar 9, 2018, 3:47 PM Advertisement
 - Costco customers love its travel service.
- The platform offers members discounts on vacations and car rentals. It also recently started offering benefits such as a 2% cashback bonus on travel purchases for executive members. Costco also offers gift cards for all members on certain purchases.
- We put the system to the test and found it easy to use.
Costco's travel service is fast becoming one of its biggest assets. The retail giant has been offering members deals on hotels, flights, cruises, and rental cars since 2000. While it might not sound like the most glamorous way to book a trip, its customers can't get enough of it, including Business Insider's Kate Taylor, who bought a seven-day trip to Puerto Rico with flights, transfer, and a hotel stay for just over $800. In Costco's most recent earnings call, on Wednesday, CFO Richard Galanti explained that the quarter's margin improvements were partly thanks to its travel business, which has high margins because of the few administrative costs associated with it. "It's not the value of that plane ticket and hotel, it's the broker commission," he said. And it's a good value for the consumer. "Following the same philosophy as in the warehouses, we offer a limited number of products in an effort to focus on partners who consistently produce high-quality, exceptional value and superb service," Costco representative Nikki Chellew told Business Insider in July. "Costco Travel adds to the overall value of the membership with savings that can exceed the cost of an annual membership." We tested out what it's like to use: SEE ALSO: I bought a Costco vacation — here's why the retailer has completely changed how I book travel Costco's travel site offers its members a selection of deals from flights to cruises and rental cars. 
The first section of the site is hotels. You can search by a destination and find somewhere to stay, even if it's that same day. We checked out a weekend in New York City in April.  Prices started at $220.25 for two nights' accommodation, including taxes, in hotels outside of the city. In central Manhattan, there was a selection of hotels that cost between $400 and $500 for the weekend.
We compared this hotel recommendation for the same dates on Booking.com. Initially, the prices looked much cheaper, but after tax was factored in, Costco came out $50 cheaper. 
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