Yahoo Package price of the plane ticket alone

I went to a party yesterday in Boston and a group of friends is taking a
bus tour thru Germany this weekend. I'm not working right now, so I
figured I'd meet them over there if I can find a decent deal. I tried
site59, orbitz,lastminutetravel.com and others - a few deals to Europe
but none to Berlin. (They're going over a few days before the bus tour
and the first 2 days of the tour are in Berlin) I checked airline
tickets online and big bucks - depending on the airline the price varies
from $2000 - $6000 r/t. Travel.yahoo.com ( aka Travelocity) showed me 2
columns:
"Airfare Only" and "With Hotel"
$2007 $1553
Huh ? $1600 WITH a hotel room ?

I then checked "Vacation Packages" on Yahoo and taking the SAME flights
that Yahoo shows as a $2007 ticket , I also get a cheap hotel included -
for $1553. That's better ! For that money, I'll upgrade the hotel and
stay in town after they leave on their bus tour. I checked maps and
picked the hotel, doublechecked the info and compared the Yahoo air
price to the Air France website price ( to see if I can get a better
deal directly from Air France, but it was displayed in Euros). It took
me a few minutes to find / downloaded a currency calculator and - my
session expired . But I had taken a snapshot of the webpage, so I
plugged the info back in and ... it was now only $1491 !! Excellent ! By
then it was 11:30pm and I'm thinking - at midnight something's gonna
change - only 3 days in advance ... ticket prices don't go DOWN ! Was it
the hotel or the airfare ?? No time to find out - I chose the flights
and the hotel again, typed in all my info quickly ( before the session
expired ) and it went through. SO, I not only got THAT same flight both
ways, BUT I also got 6 nights at a 5 star hotel included for a total of
$1771 . The hotel is normally $180+ per night for a room -- so using
Yahoo Travel math :
( ( 6 * $180 ) + $2007 ) = $1771 Go figure.

Point of the story - have it check for "Air + Hotel ":
even if I didn't go to the hotel, I'd save money by buying the cheap
package.

Bobb