Paging Jules Verne: ‘Round the world ticket tips
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A short write-up of around-the-world ticket options in the New York Times today, while generally good, left out some important options.
- Branch out. The article advises checking with the 3 big airline alliance websites (Star Alliance, OneWorld, and SkyTeam) to see flight options. That’s great, but don’t limit yourself to the alliances alone. Some airlines have side agreements outside their alliance that may be appealing, such as the Emirates/United round-the-world ticket.
- Talk to a travel agent. While many airlines can sell you the ticket, it’s often easier to deal with an agent for this kind of thing. Not every airline customer service rep knows the minutiae of round-the-world ticketing. I’d even suggest you talk to more than one travel agent, to compare pricing, routing, and heck, personality.
- Start in Sri Lanka. If you’re going around the world twice or more, consider buying the second (and third, etc.) ticket someplace like Colombo, Sri Lanka. I’m not kidding. You can buy a business class RTW ticket there for about the same price as a coach RTW ticket in the US or most of Europe, on the same airlines. The article mentions this, but it’s really worth driving home.
tags: travel | RTW | round the world tickets
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August 14th, 2006 at 2:01 pm |
How can u live in USA & start the trip from Srilanka ? Please Clarify
August 14th, 2006 at 3:51 pm |
Well, you have to get to Sri Lanka first. So starting the trip in Sri Lanka is really only practical for people who are going around the world more than once, as indicated in the original post.
So, for example, you start your RTW ticket #1 in the US, and include Sri Lanka on the list. Most RTW tickets are good for one full year, so you then put the remainder of RTW #1 on hold, and you begin RTW #2 from Sri Lanka. That ticket is almost certainly going to cost less, for a higher quality of service. When you come back to Sri Lanka, you pick up RTW #1 again.
If you’re just doing one loop around the earth, it’s probably not too practical to buy a separate ticket to/from Sri Lanka, just to get a deal on RTW tickets.
And I should add that it’s not just Sri Lanka that’s cheap, either. The price for RTW tickets varies by country. Sri Lanka is just famous for being a cheap endpoint.