ExpertFlyer Hot Topics — Where the Rubber Meets the Runway
If you dream of traveling the world but your vacation time and budget pale in comparison to the size of your Bucket List, it might be time to rethink how you vacation. This month’s Hot Topic series cracks the code on Round-the-World travel with globe-trekking wisdom from Jenny McIver, travel expert and author of “The Grown-Up’s Guide to Globetrotting.” Jenny is also giving away a copy of her best-selling book as part of our October Facebook Travel Giveaway. You can enter here.
Jenny McIver
For your next big trip, what if you could take advantage of a single airline ticket to check several destinations off your travel wish list for a fraction of the time and expense of seeing them one at a time? That’s right, it’s not just for backpackers and billionaires anymore…Round-the-World (RTW) travel just might be for you.
A RTW ticket is simply a multi-stop airline ticket traveling east or west and crossing over both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. You can travel for as little as a week or as long as a year. All of the major airlines offer RTW tickets but many people aren’t even aware they exist. Why? Created for jet-setting executives making multi-stop business trips, the airlines don’t market them to consumers. But anyone can buy one and if you’ve been saving up frequent flier miles there’s no greater redemption value. If you don’t have the miles, the best fares can often be found with a RTW ticket specialist like BootsnAll or AirTreks.
If your vacation time is limited to the traditional two weeks, RTW can be the perfect way to see more of the world in less time. Let’s take a look at what’s possible with two weeks and a RTW ticket. For our sample RTW itinerary, we’ll include some of the world’s most popular destinations like the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall. To break up the flights a little, let’s add stopovers in Paris and Honolulu. Here’s what the trip looks like if we start in New York:
New York – Paris – Cairo – New Delhi – Beijing – Honolulu – New York
Now, pick your favorite airline booking site (I used Kayak.com) to estimate the cost of individual round-trip flights to each destination. Then, price the same itinerary using a RTW ticket specialist (I used BootsnAll.com) for a single RTW ticket. Here are my results:
Kayak.com (Roundtrip)
Price
Total Flight Time
Lowest Price
$4,852
191 hours
Shortest Flight Time*
$8,725
115 hours
Giza Plateau, Egypt
*All nonstop flights
BootsnAll.com (RTW)
Price
Total Flight Time
Lowest Price*
$2,973
78 hours
Shortest Flight Time
$6,007
53 hours
*Two nonstop flights, four with one stop
Did your results surprise you? The cost savings of nearly $2,000 are obvious and substantial – but for me, it’s the time savings that are truly staggering. Consider that with the higher priced roundtrip flights you’ll also spend 113 more hours in the air than with the RTW ticket. That’s almost 3 entire work weeks! I don’t know about you but I’d rather spend those 3 weeks seeing the world, not the inside of an airplane.
When you look at it that way, can you really afford not to consider RTW for your next big trip?
Next week: Jenny will discuss how to book a Round-the-World ticket and the pros and cons of booking through an airline alliance versus a RTW ticket specialist. Follow Jenny on Facebook: www.facebook.com/RTWin30Days and Twitter @jennymciver.