How to Book an Around the World Ticket

My husband Andrew and I had many trips planned for the first quarter of last year. We were going home to the States for Christmas, visiting a few countries in South America, and hosting Atlas Adventures trips in New Zealand and South Africa. As a travel advisor, I had heard someone talk about the benefits of an around-the-world ticket. It blew my mind how much money you could potentially save as long as played by the rules. 

We were able to fly business class while spending less than we would have on one-way economy tickets! It’s not the most straightforward process but with a bit of patience; the juice is most definitely worth the squeeze! An around-the-world trip can be an amazing travel hack for you to save a lot of money. Not sure about your itinerary? Let the ticket dictate which direction and countries you visit!

Many different airline groups offer an around-the-world ticket option. I’m going to share specifically about my experience with One World as I have British Airways status and that is the best hub for us living in London. 

A Few Considerations When Researching Around-the-World Tickets

At the time of this writing, there are three types of One World RTW trips:

• oneworld Explorer; a continent-based fare,

• Global Explorer: a distance-based fare,

• Circle Pacific: an inter-continental journey exploring continents bordering the Pacific Ocean.

Destinations are categorized into three zones and six continents:

• Zone 1: North & South America

• Zone 2: Europe, the Middle East, and Africa

• Zone 3: Asia and the South West Pacific

You must travel in one forward direction, have a minimum of two stopovers and a maximum of fifteen, start and finish in the same city, and be completed within 12 months. There is a Frequently Asked Questions section on the RTW landing page for more information. 

How to Book an Around-the-World Ticket

Go to Oneworld.com, go to the “Round the World” header, click ‘Book Now’, plug in your dates and destinations, and start playing around with it. On the booking page, there is a drop-down menu to select your preferred cabin class and you can see which flights have those fare upgrades.  We typed in all the destinations that we needed to go to and the rough dates we needed to get there. We would see which flights were available and which ones weren’t. You should go into this exercise knowing that it’s going to take a little bit of time to play around with it so make sure you aren’t rushing to do this. You’ll need a bit of patience and flexibility while searching as it’s not that straightforward. The airline groups want you to work for this because it is such a money-saving travel hack and I think they probably want to deter you a bit. 

We flew around the world in business class on some of the top airlines like Q Suites for about $9,600 per person.  That’s six transatlantic business-class flights! We looked at the same exact tickets in economy and it would have been about $5,500 total. Considering how much time we were going to spend on planes and considering that these flights were business expenses (scouting and leading three different Atlas Adventures trips) we felt the difference was worth it to pay the extra for business class. 

While this is not an amount of money I would casually drop on any given day, it was worth the investment for both the money, savings, and overall experience. We also looked at economy tickets one-way for each leg of the trip and all of these stops totaled over $12,000! In the end, we still saved money doing the around-the-world ticket. Prices and availability can vary depending on your destinations and dates, but this was one of the most memorable experiences for us and something that I’ll always remember. 

Our Around the World Flight Itinerary

London to Nashville

Miami to Lima

Santiago to Sydney

Auckland to Doha

Doha to Cape Town

Johannesburg to London

Once you have your round-the-world trip booked, reach out for a consultation with our team to help plan your trip itinerary! We have expertise all over the world and can get you VIP perks and upgrades when you book with us.