My partner and I always wanted to do a luxury Round The World (RTW) trip. For many travelers, this is the ultimate trip of a lifetime. Considering that it’s also my partners birthday, it makes for a fantastic birthday trip.
A Round The World trip can range from a couple of weeks long to many months (if you have the time.) However, if you don’t have the months of time a few weeks is great as well.
Considering, we had to consider my partner’s job, this Round The World trip can only be two weeks long.
What is a Round The World Trip?
Technically a Round the World trip is a trip where you start on one point on the globe and travel the entire circumference of the Earth until you reach that point again.
It’s a little more complicated than that though. Depending on your airline of choice or alliance you can go to their round the world website and book your own flight. However, there are many rules and regulations that make it difficult for anyone to actually plan this out.
We decided to do this ourselves.
The Rules
Start at point A. We start in Los Angeles (our home base.) Move-in one straight line. No backtracking. This means if you fly, let’s say from LA to New York City, you can’t go back to Texas for your next destination. You have to fly in one direction. Hit one longitudinal section of the world per flight. This means every time you pass a longitudinal line on the globe, you can move up and down but make sure you don’t move backward. No hitting the same country as you move forward. In other words, If you hit Paris, you’re next destination cannot be Nice in France, you must move out of the country.
There are many more rules. Websites like https://oneworld.com/flights/round-the-world-fares can help you plan but there are so many rules it’s almost impossible.
In other words, doing this by yourself can be difficult. You can choose to call your airline of choice and they will work with you for a price. A Round the World ticket can be one total fare plus the price of the agent.
We did this ourselves with many flights but tried to stick to this format as much as we could.
Our Destinations
Since this is a shorter, two-week, Round The World trip we decided to choose three different cities across the globe that were massively different from each other.
However, things changed at the end.
Now, our itinerary goes as follows: LA to Paris, Paris to London, London to Dubai, Dubai to Hong Kong and Hong Kong back to point A, or LA (home base.)
Needless to say, I am very excited!
Let me break it down for you:
A round the world ticket price can vary. As I researched I found they can range from one thousand to three thousand dollars.
I first purchased a round trip ticket from LA to London for $400 round trip, then used as many miles as I could.
- London to Paris would be a train ticket on the Eurostar which is roughly 80 Pounds to get to London.
- London to Dubai using miles
- Dubai to Hong Kong using miles
- Hong Kong to Los Angeles using Miles
- My total cost about $500 just for my flights per person… for two $1,000 for me and my partner.
This does not account for hotel prices, food, petty cash, etc. I should probably mention we had lots of miles to work with and this price is way cheaper than usual.
Round the World trip, should you do it?
Yes!
If you’re a traveler and love seeing multiples cities it’s well worth it. I would say, the longer you travel the better. You can also do this for extremely cheap and low-budget. I know many people who travel around the world for years on a very tight and cheap budget. It can definitely be done.