Round the world tickets

[leepassmore]

Anyone know the best sites to plan a round the world ticket.. and open ended or return???

[dzug]

RTW tickets are one of the few things still best done through a travel agent, unless you want to take an airline's pre-set offering.

[VillageVicar]

I�m pleased to see someone considering RTW travel. It�s certainly more sensible, economically, than many of the point-to-point fares.

You�ve mentioned �open-ended� travel. Apologies, but do you mean �open-jaw,� where you fly into one city and out of another? Or are you referring to simply �open� tickets, where you have the �city-pair� (from and to) on your ticket, but no date?

The first place I�d start is with the two major �alliance� groups: Oneworld and Star Alliance. Keep in mind, that you can accrue frequent flier miles on all the sectors through them.

In the first instance, have a look at:

http://www.oneworld.com/

Then, have a browse through:

http://www.staralliance.com/en/travellers/inde x.html

In most instances, the RTW ticket is valid for either six months or twelve months. You must always continue to travel in the same direction. Open Jaws are permitted, some countries have maximum stopovers (such as the USA). Open sectors are no problem and there is no fee for booking those flights at a later date. However, anything involving having to change the board point and/or off point does bear a fee.

May I please ask what general ideas you have for your journey? I may be able to offer some advice as to which group may benefit your plans.

I wish you well

Fr Bill

[VillageVicar]

dzug: Whilst you are right that travel agents have many options, my personal experience is that I've always done exceptionally better staying away from travel agents. This has only come as a result of visiting some agents who had difficulty in finding the UK on a world map, much less knowing where Bandar Seri Begawan is!

But indeed, there are some who are good. Sadly though, now there are fees associated (or hidden added costs) as airlines no longer pay travel agents commission.

Be well

Fr Bill

[dzug]

Perhaps I should have made it clear that I meant a specialist travel agent - would agree that the likes of Going Places or Thomsons would know less than the average savvy traveller

[VillageVicar]

dzug: Phew...bless your socks! :-)

Depending on where leepassmore is going, STN, OzTravel, Travelbag and FlightCentre come to mind. However, there's a caveat that I should offer in the same breath: The relationship between airlines and suppliers has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. I share in the exasperation of some travellers who are down-line from their original point of departure, who want to make a minor change to their itinerary, who go to an airline ticket office and are told 'you'll have to contact your travel agent first' so they can make the changes. I see this happen too many times...even with things as simple as advance seat selection. When the airline controls the entirety of the booking, there are no other references they need to make.

I often lament over the sad changes that have taken place in the airline industry, especially where the innocent traveller becomes stuck in the middle. It's a rising trend and can have frightening consequences for some.

I'm not going to praddle on...but it's a small word of caution for those who travel who 'may' need to make changes to their bookings.

I wish you all well

Fr Bill

[pixiedoux]

Not really an answer, more a recommendation: I booked my RTW with STA, and they booked flights for me under the One World / Star Alliance airlines. Good deal - got it for under �1000 although my add-on to Bandar Seri Begawan (Vicar, Ive been there!!!) plus taxes pushed the cost up to around �1100.

Really handy to have an adviser to help me plan face to face but the stupid boy also advised me that travel overland from Hong Kong to Bangkok was both a)possible and b)easy. Bear in mind that not all 'advisers' have actually been to every country on the planet so it would be wise to do a little research and check out traveller sites like Lonely Planet and travellersconnected.

I wish you much luck, world travel is the very best education you'll get :)

[VillageVicar]

Pixiedoux: You made me laugh! I love the name�especially when I�m chatting with the Americans! Bless their socks! Interesting place. I�ve flown Royal Brunei quite a few times. I�m sure I was supposed to be impressed by the gold sinks and taps, but personally, I couldn�t be bothered.

Oh My! HKG-BKK overland? Well, I guess that was interesting? I�ve taken the Asian Orient Express from Singapore to BKK. I much prefer the European one. But it was still nice.

Yes, you are right. It can be beneficial to have a professional adviser. However, I�m still a bit gun-shy over the new policies in effect since the airlines have moved to net pricing with the travel agencies.

Interestingly, depending on where you�re travelling, there are some published fares that are lower than the alliance fares. But unfortunately, they don�t allow as much flexibility. A couple of years ago I did an RTW that was (I hope you don�t mind my using ICAO codes, but you�ve clearly travelled, so may know most of them) LHR-GIG-SCL-AKL-SYD-PPT-LAX-DEN-LGA-BOS-LHR ( just in case..GIG-SCL are Rio to Santiago ) The fare was only �1459. That was almost �500 less than the prevailing published RTW fare that includes travel from Asia into Australia, then transit across the states.

Yes, I can�t say enough nice things about Lonely Planet. I suppose I must as my charity is in this year�s Romania and Eastern Europe edition.

Leepassmore: Apologies, but I have to ask this please. By chance, is your surname Passmore?! If so, I may know some of your relatives and have a lovely story to share with you.

Best wishes all

Fr. Bill

[philg]

I've used Star Alliance RTW tickets a couple of times now (I use their personal planner from http://www.staralliance.com/en/travellers/fare _products/round_the_world_fare.html.

They are more flexible than One World in that they really only have 2 rules

1. You must start and end in the same place
2. You must fly over the Atlantic and Pacific once EACH

There are other rules, but most of us will never fall foul of them

The last trip was

Manchester-Philadelphia-Los Angeles-Sydney-Singapore-Kuala Lumpur-Singapore-Taipei-Hong Kong (gap) Beijing-Frankfurt-Manchester

Note that the trip CAN be "open jaw" (ie have gaps in it) and can double back (within reason)

Also, and I was surprised, I needed to change the dates of two of the flights - they did this FOR NO CHARGE (you can't change the route once you're started, but you CAN change dates/times)

All in all, a very pleasant experience - mind you, I avoid Oneworld and BA & American like the plague. I'd also suggest that you try hard NOT to fly United if you can avoid it

Finally, I'd join a Frequent Flyer program as well - you may well get enough miles for a free trip to somewhere in Europe.

Phil G

[pixiedoux]

I could talk about travel til the cows come home!

No, luckily just before I paid for my RTW ticket, another adviser looked at my route and shocked that his collegue had told me Hong Kong to Bangkok was possible he made me book a flight from Hong Kong to Phuket! This was diverted to Bangkok as luck would have it the tsunami struck 3 weeks before my trip... In a nutshell, for a first time female backpacker, China overland is not advisable because of the language barriers.

I took Lonely Planet to Chile this year. I may as well have used it as loo paper it was that useful. The most up to date edition and it was so full of inaccuracies I wondered if any of the reviewers had ever been there! That said, the Australia and Borneo versions had lots of hidden gems in there and good info on hostels.

My Chile story is on the travellersconnected.com forum.

Anyway hopefully all our stories have given you some good advice on where to go and how to do it!