128 – Planning our round the world 2010 travel

In this short show, we speak about the trials and tribulations of planning and booking our round the world travel for 2010 and beyond.

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Thanks to your suggestions, we have a good idea of what to look out for as we make our plans for 2010. However, we’re hamstrung by a combination of cash and freedom. The round-the-world ticketing options that we’ve found have either

• a) been too expensive,
• b) been too restrictive, or
• c) not gone where we want to go.

We’re currently looking at buying two tickets from .

• 1. A return ticket from Auckland to South America (either Santiago or Buenes Aires)
• 2. A RTW flight landing in Vancouver, Frankfurt and Bangkok.

Given the centrality of these locations, we can easily string together budget flights and coach and rail travel to go where we want, when we want then return to the airport city to fly out again. By reducing the amount of flights we’re committed to, we get the freedom we want and we might end up saving on money. In any case, we don’t need to pay for everything up front.

Resources

We’ve used the following resources to help us plan and make these decisions:

• Chris Guillebeau’s Travel Ninja. We’re going to be making use of his new air miles book too (reviews coming soon).
• Go Green Travel Green’s How to find cheap airline tickets (review).
• We’re probably going to be booking through .
• The Global Traveller has given us heaps of time and advice on RTW fares and strategies.

You can help add to our plans by commenting below.

A penny for your thoughts? Please comment.

1. 
   marta Says:
   

   interest what you said about the rtw ticket. after much looking around on the market we bought one ourselves for our rtw trip. as you said, you have to book all your flights ahead but since most of the airline only works 10 months ahead it might happen that your last flights are booked just for a dummy dates that you will need to change them once the airlines will open those dates for sale. sounds a bit complicated but is not. as long as the travel agent would write down those unconfirmed flights on your RTW ticket you don’t have to worry. either you check that the travel agent will “rebook” those missing flights closer to the dates or you could ring directly the airline and reconfirm it with them with no extra charge, which is what we did. if it would be a change of date then we would get charge (normally $50-70 each) but, in this case, the flights were never booked as the airline could not reconfirm it at the time we bought the whole rtw ticket so they have to do it for free.
   hope this make sense…
   these are some info that I collected a while ago http://www.atravelaroundtheworld.com/2008/11/first-big-step-rtw-ticket.html

   February 24th, 2010 at 1:26 am
2. 
   Hostel Booking Says:
   

   Planning a round the world trip can be so stressful as you try to find the right price and locations. I spent so much time looking and never found one that I was completely happy with. In the end I just bought a one way ticket and tried to find cheap transportation along the way.

   I found that I was no longer restricted to times and destinations as they always change when you meet new people. Also the thought of having the RTW ticket on me at all times is scary as I do have a habit of losing things.

   I hope you get the trip sorted and have a fantastic time.

   March 5th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
3. 
   marta Says:
   

   nowadays you are not actually carrying with you the ticket, it’s an E-ticket you only need your passport to check-in. just make sure you keep a copy handy such on an email that you could access easily also for your records

   March 5th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
4. 
   Craig and Linda Says:
   

   That’s not entirely true, although you might not have run into any problems yet (and it’s kind of an aside to losing your ticket). Some countries require proof of onward journey as part of their border control. While this might not be policed on the border, it might be policed by the airline you fly in on, as they are responsible for flying you home if you are refused entry.

   How strictly this is policed on either end is very flexible, but since the time we had to rush away from the check-in desk to print a copy of our e-ticket so the desk would issue our tickets, we’re carrying around dead trees with our flight tickets on them.

   This is antiquated and we hope things will change soon! Carrying paper when you have the data is dumb.

   March 6th, 2010 at 1:19 am
5. 
   Mr Samui Says:
   

   I would suggest that everyone is making this more complicated than it is for the two travelers. In my experience set your route and fly the least. You can buy your ticket to Bangkok and providing you have next leg committed, with specific departure date, there should not be a problem with boarder controls. I like the idea of train travel. It is slow, but you can have fun and meet loads of people on the way to each destination.

   Obviously, without a return tick to you originating country, you must factor this into your budget and at least have an approximately final departure date and location. In my experience too much commitment when you are traveling is more of a headache as you devote your attention to “the getting there on time” rather than the travel being equally as important as the arrival.

   Cheers and have a great time.

   March 23rd, 2010 at 3:47 am
6. 
   Tihomir Rangelov Says:
   

   Hey Linda and Craig and thanks for the great website.

   I have done a lot of research on RTW tickets and have used one, so I thought I could share some of that knowledge:)
   It is only fair to say that SkyTeam and Star Alliance also have some RTW offers but OneWorld´s coverage map is by far my favourite.
   I did a trip like the one you mentioned in the podcast a couple of years ago and then the cheapest deal that I found was through The Great Escapade http://www.thegreatescapade.com. This is a RTW ticket on Virgin Atlantic, Air New Zealand and Singapore Airlines. You pay by how many miles you fly and the great thing is that those airlines cover some exotic destinations so you can make a stopover on your way between continents. I stopped in the Caribbean on my way between Europe and the US (had to buy an extra ticket from Trinidad and Tobago to NY but those are quite cheap) and in Rarotonga and Fiji on my way from USA to New Zealand. Singapore Airlines also has an extensive network in Asia so you can plan at least your first destination in Asia, then roam around as you like and then come back to Singapore to continue.
   You can collect all the miles on a Virgin Atlantic card and they give away free long distance flights for as little as 20,000 miles. I collected 25,000 on my trip.
   The only downsides I can think of are that you can only start from the UK (I am not 100 pct sure though, that needs to be checked) and also that the package doesn´t seem to be very popular and the customer service agents could not answer all of my questions. It took a couple of days and a few phone calls to book it through VA´s London call centre. I did not have to make any changes to my ticket while travelling but a friend had to and he said some Air NZ agents did not even know about this package. They also charged him for the change while I was told on the phone that the first change was free as long as you only change dates.
   That was a very well priced option back in 2008 and I am sure it still is. Especially when the GBP is quite low at the moment.
   Anyways, I hope this helps.
   Have a good one.
   T.

   June 18th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
7. 
   Craig and Linda Says:
   

   Great update, Tihomir! Thanks for sharing this.

   June 18th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
8. 
   Tihomir Rangelov Says:
   

   Happy to help.
   If anyone needs more details about my experience with the Great Escapade, pls write to trr2 (at) hi (dot) is.

   June 18th, 2010 at 7:05 pm

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