How we stumbled upon the idea of round the world tickets?
We had our good friends Bob and Jo visiting us for lunch during one weekend. They were soon getting married and were thinking of doing a mini-world trip for their honeymoon. Such an exciting and interesting way to start their married life! Once they’d left, Seema looked at me and said – ‘Hey how about we start our early retired and nomadic life with a world trip?’ Sounded like a great idea! What a way it would be do celebrate the early retirement … and our big 50th birthday milestones … in different spectacular parts of the world!!
This was not on our retirement checklist that we meticulously planned and followed but decided to add it as a celebration. Before we knew it, the rest of the weekend – and many more subsequent weekends – were spent on going down the rabbit hole of planning the travel, selecting destinations, evaluating the ‘round-the-world-tickets’ and finalizing our plans.
This article focusses on the ‘round-the-world’ tickets and provides the insight into the benefits, price ranges, options, ticket guidelines and tips to setup your dream itinerary.
What are ‘Round-The-World’ (RTW) tickets?
As the name says, these are flight tickets that let you fly around the world at a relatively lower price (compared to standard one-way/return flights to the same destinations) with a lot more flexibility. With the RTW tickets, you can fly around the globe generally in one direction starting and ending the trip in the same country while stopping at multiple destinations based on your flexible and custom itinerary.
Most airline alliances (Star Alliance, OneWorld, SkyTeam) offer these RTW tickets and some airlines also allow to buy these tickets using their air-miles.
How much do these RTW tickets cost?
The RTW tickets are typically calculated by the number of miles flown. While planning our trip, we determined that the price of a single RTW ticket falls in the range of:
– Economy: 1500$ – 5000$
– Business: 5000$ – 15000$
– First: 15000$ – 25000$
For example
<example of a lower side and a higher side itinerary>
The above range is in USD however do note that typically the RTW ticket is priced in the currency of the origin country of travel. A RTW business class ticket of our dream itinerary of 11 destinations starting from Singapore cost us 16,000SGD (12,000USD)
Benefits of a RTW ticket
RTW is probably the best and the most convenient way to travel around the world while visiting your dream destinations. Some definite benefits based on our experience so far:
– Price: The RTW tickets are definitely cheaper than the standard one-way / return tickets to the same destinations booked separately, as the RTW price is calculated on the number of miles flown. So, you also don’t need to worry about the higher fares, peak seasons etc while making changes to the tickets.
– Flexibility: The RTW ticket also provides a lot more flexibility on the date, destination, and the route changes. For example, the tickets we bought using Star Alliance, allows us to make any number of date changes free of cost while changes to the destinations cost a mere 125$.
– Tailored itinerary: You are the master of your own itinerary and can build your dream world trip. You can decide to see the natural wonders, architectural hotspots, chase summer throughout the year, see all the big cities – the world is your oyster! Star Alliance even has some suggested itineraries to inspire you
Can miles be used to purchase the RTW tickets?
A few airlines do offer the RTW tickets using miles. Worth checking with the airline you have your miles with. We are Singapore Airlines’ frequent flyer and they offer:
– Economy RTW ticket for 200,000 KrisFlyer Miles,
– Business RTW ticket for 280,000 KrisFlyer Miles,
– First RTW ticket for 405,000 KrisFlyer Miles, https://www.singaporeair.com/en_UK/us/ppsclub-krisflyer/use-miles/redeem-miles/star-alliance-round-the-world-award/
Even though it is a very good bang-for-the-buck of airmiles, I found the RTW ticket using miles a lot more restrictive. For instance, an RTW ticket bought from Singapore Airlines Krisflyer miles doesn’t allow any date, destination, or route changes! This was deal-breaker as we were planning for around a one-year world trip and wanted the flexibility of changing the dates, even if not the destination or the route.
RTW ticket guidelines
Although the RTW tickets are cheaper and pretty flexible, they do come with certain guidelines that have to be followed:
- Duration of travel: There is a minimum trip (I’ve seen ranging from 3 days to 10 days) and a maximum duration of the trip (typically one year)
- Ocean crossings: to make the trip truly a ‘round the world’ you must cross the Atlantic Ocean once and the Pacific Ocean once.
- Direction of travel: Typically you have to travel in one direction, either east or west, around the globe. Means once you decide to go from Asia to Europe, you have to continue in the same direction (we chose Asia-Europe-North America-Australia-Asia). However there is flexibility to backtrack within a region. For example, within Asia we go from east to west (Singapore to Delhi) and then west to east (Delhi to Bangkok).
- Number of stopovers: You will have to do minimum of 2-3 stopovers and can do a maximum of 10-15 stopovers. This depends on the airline alliance and the class of travel
- Connections: You can’t connect through the city you started in. Though you can connect from the other stopovers, you can’t stopover again more than 24 hrs in the same city
This all may sound complex but good news is the alliance sites help you navigate through this with their interactive site and helps not only build the price but keep the travel itinerary within the guidelines
I’m sold! How do I buy the ticket?
Great! You can buy the RTW ticket via
– Travel agency: you will need to find an agency that specializes in world trips and have exclusive access to airline deals. They can help you build an itinerary but would require multiple sittings / calls with the travel agency office
– Travel portals: I’ve found that most big travel portals like Kayak, Skyscanner, Expedia, Booking etc aren’t really equipped for RTW tickets. Basically, they show multiple one-way tickets under their ‘Multi-City’ option with mostly limiting to maximum of 6-8 stopovers. The site that I found most user-friendly was Airteks (https://airtreks.com/). They have a simple interface to build the RTW travel and based on what I read on the net, seem to have quite a lot of experience in such itineraries.
– From the airline: (mostly via their call centers as most of the airline sites aren’t that user friendly for RTW ticket purchases)
– or the airline alliances. We can no experiences with a travel agent as we’ve never really used one (the planning itself is so much fun! Why outsource that?!).
- Or the airline alliances: Most airline alliances (Star Alliance, OneWorld, SkyTeam) offer RTW tickets and some airlines also allow to buy these tickets using their air-miles.
We bought our RTW tickets from the Star Alliance site as Singapore Airlines (where we are the frequent flyers of) is part of Star Alliance. However, we did explore different airline alliance options. Here are some of our observations:
- Star Alliance
This is the largest airline alliance so gives you access to pretty much every dream destination in the world. One is able to do upto 16 flights on the RTW ticket and travel up to 39,000 miles over 365 days (our journey is of 33,283 miles with 11 flights). They have a very intuitive and intelligent booking tool that lets you explore different flight options while staying within their travel guidelines.
The site also has many cool theme-based itineraries. We looked a quite a few for inspiration but custom-built our own dream round-the-world ticket.
- SkyTeam
SkyTeam the world’s second largest airline alliance and has airlines from different continents in the mix. So, it is possible to travel to all continents. Unfortunately, they seem to have suspended round the world tickets when we checked
- OneWorld
The alliance covers all the continents with British Airways, AA, Quantas, JAL and Finnair in the mix. OneWorld offers different kinds of RTW tickets:
- Continent-Based airfare: An intercontinental and multi-city round the world journey. Price increases by the number of continents you add to the itinerary.
- Distance-Based airfare: Like the Star Alliance model, price is based on the distance travelled. It also provides an access to code-share airlines (including Jetstar, Air Tahiti etc) to match the number of destinations that Star Alliance offers
- Circle Pacific: Travel excluding Middle East, Europe, Africa and SouthEast Asia
Their site is relatively simple and easy but we found Star Alliance tool more interactive and easy to use.
Buy RTW tickets if …
- You are planning a long holiday of at least few weeks (or maybe months).
- You are planning a trip across different continents with multiple long haul flights.
- You are a frequent flyer and want to use / gain miles for your program.
- You like using airlines that are typically part of the big alliances.
Don’t buy RTW tickets if …
- You are planning a short holiday and intend to visit only a few cities in single continent.
- You don’t really have a set plan and want to keep the holiday / travel very open ended.
- You like using the budget airlines.
- You don’t really care about miles or frequent flyer programs.
A very handy way to book tickets .Thanx to this dynamic couple for sharing these tips.