This article is about the option between buying a RTW ticket or buying your airplane tickets one by one, as you go along your route. It’s about companies selling RTW tickets, the advantages and disadvantages of each option and why we chose to pay as we go.
RTW Ticket
RTW tickets are usually sold by Star Alliance, One World and Skyteam, although there might be others, these companies where the ones that kept popping up during our searches (Great Escapade was an option but unfortunately it was closed sometime during 2012).
Each of these companies has a route planning software in their website, with which each traveller can build a RTW trip simulation, choosing cities/airports to where you will want to fly and the miles used in each flight. In the end, all the miles summed up make up the cost of your trip, of course.
From our searches and taking into account the trip and route we plan to do, the biggest disadvantage of the RTW was the price. That was the main reason why we opted for the Pay-as-we-go choice. The minimum price we got to, to take all the flights needed for our trip, was over 3.300 euros and with the pay-as-we-go scheme (even searching prices only weeks in advance), we would get to values of around 2.200 euros per person. We believe we got this difference mainly because we could use a lot of low-cost airlines, which are not a part of these group of big airlines that offer the RTW option.
A very important limit on the RTW tickets is that they are valid for one year only, starting from the date of departure. When you’re travelling around the world, one year can go by really quick.
Pay-as-you-go
The biggest advantage of pay-as-you-go is no doubt, its flexibility and the fact that it enables you to use some amazing low cost airlines, particularly in Southeast Asia. Although in South America there aren’t that many cheap options to fly, the truth is, most of the time, you will probably be travelling by bus anyway, so it doesn’t make that much of a difference.
In Asia and Oceania, since there are so many low-cost options, it can be an advantage to be able to get these cheap tickets instead of more expensive ones from major airlines from Star Alliance, One World and Skyteam.
Conclusion
Choosing the type of ticket for a round the world trip is an important step during your planning, since it will be a significant part of your budget and can imply losing some flexibility. It is mostly a personal choice. In our case, we thought it would be fun to try it, it can end up being cheaper (thanks to being able to choose low-cost airlines) and in some cases can enable us to take the land transport option, thus allowing us to do some additional sightseeing while travelling from point A to point B, which would be impossible in many cases, if we chose the air option.
For those who plan to travel for a year, the real question you should start by answering is: what if, during the trip I choose to travel for two years? =)
And if you’re wondering why travelling is good for you, here are 8 good reasons why.
