Anyone Expert on "Round the World" Tickets?

[Bobbsy]

My wife and I (along with our 4 year old terror) are just starting to look into a "big" vacation later on this year before the lad starts proper school at the end of January 2010. We are seriously considering splurging on "round the world" tickets if these make sense economically.

 

Does anyone here have any experience doing one of these trips and can you recommend a good travel agent (or airline direct?) for putting together an itinerary?

 

FYI, the stops we know we'd like to make are Las Vegas, Victoria BC (not necessarily in that order), New York City, London and Istanbul. Prince George/Edmonton/Calgary/Ottawa are also possibilities though I'm sure some or all might end up being "side trips" We''d probably add a stop or two on the way back round to Brisbane but could tailor those to the routes of whatever alliance we end up booking with.

 

If the alliance we book with could either do business class not at 3 times the economy...or some form of "premium economy" with bigger seats, we could look at that.

 

So...anybody have any suggestions about who to talk to and how to start planning?

 

Bob

[Guest proud2beaussie]

Hi Bob,

I can put together a RTW package for you if you would like to PM me with some rough details of when you might be looking at travelling,I can prepare quotes from several airlines including Qantas,BA,Emirates,Singapore,Virgin Atlantic or Cathay Pacific depending on routings,I can also include some codeshare flights with American Airlines if needed.

RTW planning can be quite complex but with the right details I should be able to come up with something at fairly reasonable fares.

 

Alternatively there is an excellent online RTW booking tool available at:

http://www.oneworld.com/ow/flight-info/plan-and-book-your-itinerary

Cheers

N'OZ

 

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[Guest]

Not an expert but we did our reccie to Perth that way - we used a 'Great Escapade' ticket from Virgin & booked it ourselves directly having planned it out on their website. We upgraded to Premium Economy with Virgin from UK to Tokyo & from Auckland to LA (New Zealand Airlines) & again Virgin LA to UK. Our other flights were Singapore Airlines so we couldn't upgrade but theser were shorter flights and the A380 made up for it. Each upgrade cost £200 per person (including our 5 year old).

 

The Great Escapade - Welcome

 

We found the trip difficult to plan - it is far less flexible than you might think & none of the travel agents I tried were any use (all very keen to take my money if i could tell them where I wanted to go but none were willing/able to tell me what my options were from each destination with each of the different tickets available)

 

In the end I spent a lot of time on the internet - best advice I can give is decide what your MUST see destinations are (the fewer the better) & then find which RTW tickets will allow you to visit those places. You can then 'fill in the gaps' from the other destinations on offer for that ticket.

 

Generally you must travel in one direction only without backtracking - some restrict the number of stops in a continent - although you can do 'legs' by land or other flights.

 

(Beware the 'mistake' we made - we booked an independent flight with Virgin Blue between Perth & Sydney which then effectively halved our luggage allowance for the whole trip!!)

 

You probably know the options already but others we looked at were Oneworld, Star Alliance, Britsh Airways (World Discovery ticket). This is a good summary Round the World Flights: Planning your around the world flight tickets

 

The other option is to simply book tickets to each of the places you want to go which is I think what Nigel is offering to price up for you.

 

Enjoy!

 

Jules