Round the world tickets

[UniFoxOs]

Mrs UFO wants to go to NZ next year (2014, I mean, we are off to the Caribbean this winter) and I want to see the Great Barrier Reef. She wants to start planning now. I am under the impression that "Round the World" tickets are not that much different in price to return tickets to the Antipodes.

So I'm looking for advice on this. Firstly is there really any significant price difference? Secondly how does the RTW price vary with number of stopovers - for example is there a "break point" at which they suddenly get more expensive. With no planning as yet I am expecting we would want 5 or 6 stopovers. If more stopovers adds greatly to the cost then are there Great Barrier Reef packages available from, say, Auckland, for 4 or 5 days we could take during a stopover as a separate booking, rather than use Cairns as one of our stopovers?

Routing. We plan to travel westwards, and being ancient rehumaticky old codgers, we want to limit sectors to about 10 hours max. So we would probably want one stopover in USA (probably LA as we didn't see much of it this year, just enough to make us want to go back for a longer visit), then Auckland followed by Oz somewhere, probably N or W as we have already been to Sydney, Melbourne and the red centre. Then Far East somewhere and possibly one more stop on the route back to UK. Also a tropical island somewhere along the way Fiji?, Samoa? Bali?, but not Hawaii as we were there in 2011.

Any suggestions about "must visit" locations along this sort of a route, "must avoid" places also, and ideas for a tropical island stop. Also I'd appreciate any info re ticketing, as I am assuming that the alliances between various airlines might make it easier or cheaper to book some routes than others. Never been to far east before, or travelled through so I've no idea what to expect. Oh, and we can't stop in Dubai, we take medicines that are illegal there.

[strake]

My advice, for what it's worth, is to pick one of the airline alliance groups. I used them for a RTW trip on business and it worked out fine.
Here is a link to the OneWorld Alliance oneworld planner (http://rtw.oneworld.com/) where you can plan your trip to your hearts content.

NB Other Alliances are no doubt available. Have fun!

[Tableview]

Definitely best to stick to an alliance - they all offer them. Otherwise the airline specific fares are usually the same as the associated alliance fares.

The basic premise is that you must continue in the same direction, without backtracking, and you may not transit the country of origin, and only one transatlantic and one transpacific sector is allowed. Reservations must be confirmed for the first sector, some fares allow you to leave subsequent sectors open, some require an advance booking period but obviously there is a risk involved in not booking ahead as travel is usually in a lower yield fare class and these may be full.

The number of stopovers allowed is variable but with your proposed itinerary you are unlikely to run up against a maximum.

The RW fares are available in all classes.

There are a couple of agencies inthe UK who specialise in them - Trailfinders are good, and some branches of STA have staff who are knowledgeable about them too although they tend to aim at the more cost sensitive end of the market.

As for where to stop over, that's down to personal choice. For example I would not go back to LA for love nor money, whereas it obviously appealed to you!

If you need any help on the ticketing/fare quote side of it, send me a PM.

[Hartington]

I'm less inclined to push you off at one of the alliances. Don't get me wrong they could well be the answer but there are other ways of doing it. I would definitely go and see someone like Trailfinders. They sometimes know about combinations of one ways that can be as good a deal as an alliance RTW deal.

Pity Air NZ aren't going to fly London/Hong Kong any more. But it might be worth giving them a call too. A few years ago their Air NZ only R/T fare to Auckland was cheaper than an RTW but allowed you to go either way round and we went LON/HKG/AKL/SFO drove to LAX and then LAX/LON. They might have done a deal with someone on LON/HKG to retain their ability to offer a R/T fare with the same stops. (We only went to SFO and drove to LAX because we wanted to - we could simply have come up to LAX and stopped there - the fare was the same). Then you could buy a cheap ticket across the Tasman and back to NZ.

Always remember that a break in journey (like ours SFO to LAX) may not be cost prohibitive particularly when using an alliance ticket.

I'm not sure how oneWorld fill the gap between Fiji and Australia these days but they used to have a deal with someone so that you could go London/Rio/Santiago/Easter Island/Fiji/Sydney (Auckland too I think). And instead of the usual suspects through the east how about coming up to Tokyo and then home from there for a change?

Oh, one last thing. I don't know how long you're going for but we were away nearly 3 months. Because we were going out immediately after New Year I knew the flights would be full so I phoned Air NZ the day bookings opened for the LON/HKG segment. Even though they couldn't actually book the other segments they "registered" them, issued the tickets (with open segments) and, as the bookings opened for each segment, the booking (and seat allocation) was completed. Not so long ago I saw a "travel expert" in the press say this wasn't possible which (quite apart from my Air NZ experience) I know is poppycock. Depending on when you plan to travel in 2014 you could start booking (and locking in fares) very soon.

[Tableview]

Even though they couldn't actually book the other segments they "registered" them, issued the tickets (with open segments) and, as the bookings opened for each segment, the booking (and seat allocation) was completed.
Not so long ago I saw a "travel expert" in the press say this wasn't possible which (quite apart from my Air NZ experience) I know is poppycock.


This is exactly right and proves as is often the case that 'travel experts' have no idea what they are talking about.

If the travel date required is outside the system's booking horizon, which is usually up to 361 days but depending on the hosting system can be as little as 270 although 330 is more typical, the segments are booked as 'ghost' segments and when they come into range, the agent has to manually book them as active segments. The process relies on finding an agent who knows this and can be bothered to do so.

[Dick Fisher]

This is something we are doing, starting in January 2013.

It has proven remarkably easy. Once we decided to go East to West, we talked with Trailfinders (as suggested) and they were able to very quickly put together a proposed itinerary for us.

As it happens, the One World alliance works out best for us as we wanted to visit Fiji on the way to NZ. So (for now) BA/Qantas were the key members of the alliance with Pacific Air doing the LAX-Fiji-AUK legs. On the way back, we get BA from Sydney to Singapore, then Qantas for the rest of the way so we can give the A380 a try!

I can only guess what will happen when Qantas tie the knot with Emirates. Less flexibility I would guess, until new alliances are formed.