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

Planning Your RTW Journey

No matter what the length of your RTW trip, you will need some lead time to prepare. You may need visas, which can take anywhere from days to weeks to arrange, and you may need vaccinations, some of which require a series of jabs with minimum times between each (for example, vaccinations for Hepatitis A/B).

I would allow a minimum of three months to plan an RTW trip. If you are looking to travel for a lengthy period of time, say six months or more, then I would allow four to six months for planning.

The advice given on this website is geared primarily for those contemplating independent travel or a mix of independent and group travel. Group travelers will still benefit from the advice given, but will not have to attend to many of the details which independent travelers will.

Pre-Planning - Get Current Information about The Airline Alliances

Before starting your detailed RTW planning, visit some local offices of airlines in your area and talk to a few travel agents about the current costs and rules attached to RTW airline tickets. Try to familiarize yourself with the different airline alliances and how the RTW ticket policies vary among each of them. Following are some links to airline alliance websites:

oneworld - http://www.oneworld.com/

American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, LAN, Malév, QANTAS, and Royal Jordanian

Star Alliance - http://www.staralliance.com/baseAction.do?language=

Air Canada, Air China, Lufthansa, SAS, Singapore Airlines, South African Airways, Thai Airways, United, and many others

Sky Team - http://www.skyteam.com/

Aeroflot, AeroMexico, Air France, KLM, Alitalia, China Southern, Continental ^(a), Czech, Delta, Korean Airlines, and Northwest (NWA)

^(a) Continental will be switching from Sky Team to Star Alliance in October 2009. Until the transition is complete and the kinks have been worked out, it is not advisable to book an RTW ticket on Continental.

The terms and conditions of airline programs change frequently, so I have not listed any of the program details here. You should get up-to-date information from the alliances themselves or from your travel agent. As a rule-of-thumb, though, the RTW ticket programs fall into two categories:

RTW tickets with a cap on total stops and/or miles traveled worldwide

- and -

RTW tickets with a cap on total stops and/or miles traveled per continent

The tickets are generally good for one year from the date of issue. Flight dates can typically be changed without penalties, but, you must ticket the actual destinations in advance and are generally not allowed to change the routing.

Overall Framework for Planning

The methodology I recommend for planning an RTW trip involves three iterations of research and decision making:

For the First Iteration of Planning, decide on the amount of time that you would like to devote to your RTW trip, choose a tentative initial departure date, and decide on a “broad stroke” itinerary based on your theme, or, if “wanderlust” is your theme, the places you would like to visit. This list of initial destinations should be from the top of your head, without research. Let’s call these “Level 1” destinations. After you have listed those destinations and identified them on a map, the basic research begins. Your research will incorporate a number of variables that will affect your travel planning, such as seasonal or government travel restrictions, political environment, and costs to travel in the destinations you have chosen. You will also try to form a basic itinerary within the restrictions of your RTW airline ticket. At this point, you should not worry about arrival and departure dates for each destination - you are trying to build a framework that will be used as a basis for more detailed research and decision making, which will allow you to settle on arrival and departure dates later. I will explain more on the next webpage.

World Political Map as of 2008, courtesy of One World - Nations Online.

Click HERE to download a full size map.

For the Second Iteration of Planning, you will revisit your planned destinations but research your options at a more local level. Based on the research you did for your “Level 1” destinations, you will have eliminated some destinations and perhaps added others. Update your map accordingly. You will now be able to do local research on the remaining destinations, and add places you would like to visit outside the scope of your overall RTW ticket. Let’s call these “Level 2” destinations. Such destinations include cities or countries near your “Level 1” destinations that you may be interested in. Travel to and from these destinations would be outside the scope of your RTW ticket and would be booked locally. You also will want to be sure you are aware of any local festivals or special events that may be happening during your overall travel timeframe to be sure you don’t miss anything you would have wanted to participate in. Based on this research, you will start to determine how much time you would like to spend at each major RTW stop, including side-trips, and can start to decide on arrival and departure dates for each. I will explain more about how to do this in upcoming web pages.

For the third and final iteration, you will lock in your RTW arrival and departure dates for each RTW ticket stop. If certain bookings for flights or special events need to be made well in advance, you would make them now. Then, depending on how you like to travel (i.e., “throw caution to the wind” versus “have every last detail planned and booked in advance”), you will now be able to focus on packing your bags, taking care of last-minute details at home, and heading to the airport.

It can be weeks between each of the three iterations mentioned above. The time between each will depend on the quantity and depth of research you decide to do.

So now, let’s move on to planning your trip!