GoRoundTheWorld.com - RTW Travel - Pre-Planning an RTW Trip

Third (and Final) Iteration of Planning

The detailed research work is almost over and now you’ve made it to the Third Iteration of Planning. This Iteration involves fine-tuning your RTW ticket to match your desired arrival and departure dates at each of your RTW destinations. Be sure to consult the GoRoundTheWorld.com RTW Ticket Primer for advice about making your RTW airline bookings.

To stay within some of the more detailed restrictions attached to your RTW ticket, you may have to add a couple of days or a week to your expected stay in a particular destination, which may mean dropping a few days in yet another, to get an available seat.

You may also have to change some of your planned routings on account of the restrictions attached to your particular RTW ticket. For example, oneworld Explorer tickets allow a maximum of two layovers and one stopover for any given city. It sounds like that shouldn’t be a concern, but if you take an airport like London Heathrow, which has a fair chunk of the world’s long-haul flights departing and arriving, you can run out of options as you try to satisfy the restrictions attached to your RTW ticket. When such things happen you will have to try alternate airports and airlines within the alliance until you find a suitable routing. You may even have to sacrifice one of your destinations, while adding a different one, to make it all work.

You will get the hang of this fairly quickly as you work on finalizing your RTW ticket. Once you have everything reserved and ticketed, you can focus on spending some time with family and friends, preparing for your trip, packing, and taking care of last-minute details.