Should we buy a Round The World Ticket?

Cheaper than a 747

A round the world ticket sounds like a great idea and is what every travel agent seems to suggest so are we sold on the idea?

Pros:

Cheaper than buying flights individually
Possible to change flight dates
You have a plan to follow
UK-based travel company to manage any changes
Easier for budgeting
You have an onward ticket, often needed to pass immigration controls

Cons:

You have to start and finish in the UK
Expensive to change the route
Limited to an airline/alliance
Limited destinations
You don’t have a lot of flexibility
Can’t use air miles
Our plans are not that concrete!!
Valid for a maximum of 12 months

The last one is actually a biggie for us as we have a minimum trip length of 14 months from early July 2012 to September 2013 when the autumn school term starts.

Yesterday Laura at Travel Nation in Brighton (Thanks Dan for the recommendation!) kindly spent almost a couple of hours with us bouncing our family gap years plans around and a solution is taking shape that should work for us. Here is how it is looking:

Single to New Zealand via South America (land Rio, fly out of Santiago) valid for up to 12 months. When we know arrival dates in NZ we book an onward flight from there into the Pacific to avoid immigration hassles on landing. Basically a year to get to New Zealand and we can make it up as we go with internal flights in S America. Let’s book and get the house rented…

Mo is currently looking at a bit more structure! I am just happy we have a workable plan to fall back on.

2 Comments (+add yours?)

Daniel Mason
Feb 23, 2012 @ 09:03:29

When I went we bought round the world tickets, with BA and their oneworld partners, Quantas etc, it was 12 years ago but all the flights were excellent. We had loads of destinations and could change the times whenever we liked, we included a lot of overland travel, and you can always loop round if you need. Also added an extra flight to Easter island for £75, that flight if booked separately was £600…

Some of your cons though were not a concern for us, wanted to come back to uk, 12 months was long enough, was a bit annoyed about the airmiles though as I didn’t know that till we got back and tried to claim them! (Wanted to book another holiday after such a log time away!)

You spend the last extra 2 months in the second to last stopover and get a single back to UK?

Martin
Feb 24, 2012 @ 18:21:28

Love the idea of going via Easter Island. I missed out 20 years ago when I was in Chile (we went to Bolivia instead which was pretty special).

We could do your last stop plan but what if a year is just too short 🙂