Sunday, October 24, 2010

Round The World Tickets (RTW)


One of the lesser known ways to travel is the RTW or Round The World ticket.  They allow a person the ability to travel around the world for a set price regardless of destination.  If done correctly they can save a person hundreds or even thousands of dollars in airfare for your trip.  The trick is to knowing when and how and when to use them.  The first thing you need to know about RTW tickets is that they require extensive planning.  You have to make sure that you know what area of the world you plan to be in at any particular time.  While it is possible to change some of the tickets after they have been scheduled there are restrictions like limited seats per flight that might make it difficult to alter your plans on the fly if that is your travel style.  Also each airline group like Oneworld and Star Alliance have their own rules and regulations on how their RTW tickets can be used.  It is important to be aware of the specific rules each carrier group offers because some offer their plans based on mileage, others on a per continent basis, some say you can't back track or have specific numbers of stops per continent you have to take, all of this is important because all of this will dramatically affect how and where you plan your trip.  The only really consistent limitation I have seen in RTW tickets is that they generally require the trip to conclude within a year.  The benefits of an RTW ticket is that you can use it to dramatically reduce the cost on the world's most expensive air routes, particularly between North or South America and Oceania (the Australian continent).  When planing your routes remember that you do not want to pay for plane tickets to each city you will be going to (if you did this your RTW ticket might not be cheaper than standard airfare) what you want to do instead is use it to get you to a specific region such as South East Asia.  For example if you land in Thailand and want to explore you should use overland travel, like the cheap bus to Cambodia, or use one of the regional air lines which can be very cheap depending on what part of the world you are in.  All of this is done so that you do not needlessly waste your mileage or your number of allotted flights.  In the end if you use it correctly and in the right circumstances you can use an RTW ticket to travel cheaper and more often than you would with other methods.


*image taken from wikimedia commons and can be found here

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