Transport: Flights/trains/buses

• Should I buy one RTW ticket or individual ones?
• Should I get a rail pass before I leave?
• Can I sail on freight ships?
• What about those air courier services?
• How far in advance should I buy individual tickets?

Should I buy one RTW ticket or individual ones?

This is a very common question and the answer to it will make an enormous difference in what sort of trip you have. Chance are, whichever direction you are leaning now is the right answer for you, but there are advantages and disadvantages to both methods so we will discuss those here.

First of all, a RTW ticket is a special group of tickets all sold in one bundled package by a company that has deals with various airline groups around the world. If you decide this is what's right for you, BootsnAll specializes in these tickets and we'd love to sell you one, but we won't try to convince you this option is right for you if it isn't. If it is, and you want to get an idea on pricing or just start planning your stops, head on over to our RTW Trip Planner.

Advantages of one ticket
Let's say you have 4 months in which you'd like to complete your trip. If you have a pretty firm idea of your general itinerary and schedule, buying all these tickets at once before you leave is almost always going to save you money, possibly a lot of money. If you've imagined, say, 6 flights that will take you RTW, and you buy the tickets all at once, while a traveling companion buys them one at a time along the way, yours will be cheaper.

And in case you were curious, yes, you can incorporate some overland travel into that ticket. In other words, you can buy a ticket from Rio de Janeiro to Lisbon and then your next segment is Athens to Cairo. You'll get from Lisbon to Athens on trains or buses or even other planes if you want.

And you can also change some of your dates, often for a fee, but the fee is usually modest in the overall scheme of things. Changing destinations is where it starts getting tricky and expensive. On some RTW tickets you buy a certain number of miles and then one major restriction is you have to continue going in the same direction (east or west). On the tickets BootsnAll and some other companies sell you can zig-zag all you want because you'll basically be buying a group of point-to-point tickets of your own choosing. So if instead of flying from Buenos Aires to Madrid you have changed your mind and you want to fly to London instead, the only way to change is to contact that airline to see if they'll give you credit for your existing ticket in exchange for another one to London. In a case like this, flying to Madrid and buying another ticket from there to London will be far cheaper than switching, so unless you have a drastic change of heart during your trip you can still be flexible for a small extra price.

The other advantage of a single ticket - and this can be a major issue - is that buying one ticket in advance locks in your major transportation costs in advance and also makes budgeting the rest of your trip much easier. Depending on your route and timetable, your flights can be more than half of your overall budget, or at least a big chunk of it. If you can get that out of the way that can take a lot of stress out of your trip.

Things tend to cost more than we assume they will. Buying tickets from point to point can easily get away from you from a cost standpoint. It doesn't have to be that way, but making it up as you go might cost much more than you expected it would, and then half way around the world you've spent 90% of your entire flight budget. Then the stress sets in and corners must be cut. If your overall budget is this flexible then it's not a problem, but if you had a fixed amount set aside then this type of stress might not be worth it.

Advantages of buying as you go
The advantages of buying as you go pretty much begin and end at the mind-blowing and absolute freedom you have to wander the globe at your own pace and on your own terms. For many people this is the largest single appeal of doing a RTW in the first place so it's not really a question of either/or, but one of how difficult is this to actually pull off?

The answer to that question is, it's pretty easy, but it's not necessarily easy and cheap. If this is what you had in mind it definitely can be done, but unless you have some sort of trust fund it's probably a bad idea to just head to the airport with your backpack and wing it without doing any research.

Avoiding pitfalls going point-to-point
As you certainly already know "walk-up fares" are outrageously expensive in most cases. As you are going RTW you might encounter some fixed fares that are the same price no matter when you buy them, but most of the time walk-up fares will be double, triple, or worse, than that same seat if you bought it a week before. It sounds very romantic to just head to each airport on a whim, but doing it that way you'll be broke by the time you're half way around.

So this point-to-point system is an amazing and freeing way to spend part of your life, but it's important to do some research before you leave and also while on the road. And often you are best off buying your onward ticket a week - or at least a few days - in advance. However, with the rise of the new discount airlines the pricing schemes are changing, even for the major carriers competing against them.

On many popular routes they sell the first 20% or so of the seats at the lowest price, and then the price goes up incrementally as each further 20% or so gets sold. So you might want to fly from Rome to Athens on a given day and seats on the noon flight are offered at €200, but seats for the midnight flight might only be €80 even on the day of travel. If you just turn up at the airport in the morning you might end up being there for 15 hours because you didn't research this in advance. If you'd decided on your departure day a week earlier you might be on the 9 a.m. flight for only €80, giving you the whole afternoon in Athens instead of the whole day at the Rome Airport.

So this freedom of point-to-point travel does come at a cost, but if you plan ahead and are smart about it you can keep that cost to a minimum. It's also a good idea to get a general idea of prices from one place to another when you are coming up with your vague route map before you even leave.

Certain sections of your trip might be surprisingly cheap, but others might be insanely expensive, even places that aren't too far apart. One example of a possible shocker is one-way from Australia to the United States. There is very little competition on that route so one-way prices are rarely discounted and usually close to the round-trip price, which is a lot. Of course, things change all the time, and new airlines are springing up and others are going out of business. The point is that doing some research early might save you a lot of time or money later on, even though that is a bit of a buzzkill on your directionless wandering thing.

Don't some countries require onward tickets in order to enter?

Yes, that’s true, and that might make going point-to-point more complicated. Quite a few countries have a rule whereby you need to show proof in the form of a ticket back out of the country before they’ll even let you in. Of course, the concept behind that is they are trying to discourage unwanted immigrants who arrive on fumes, financially speaking, and intend to enter the underground economy soon after arrival. The good news is that if you look unlikely to become a surprise immigrant to that country, they often won’t even ask.

You’ll have to check each time you plan on entering a country with this rule, but it might come up for you, and some countries are strict about this. The best trick to get around this rule if you don’t want to buy your onward ticket in advance is to buy a full-fare, FULLY REFUNDABLE ticket to a nearby country, hopefully on an airline that also goes to your next planned destination. These tickets are expensive, but of course the idea is that you’ll get a full refund back to your credit card instead of using it. Or better yet, you can trade it in toward the cost of your next cheapo ticket and get a refund of the difference, if any.

This doesn’t seem to be a too common problem for most RTWers, but it does come up from time to time and this is obviously another advantage to buying a single RTW ticket in advance.

Should I get a rail pass before I leave?

When we talk about rail passes the only ones that might make sense for a RTW traveler are a Eurail Pass (only available outside of Europe and only to non-European residents) and a USA Rail Pass (only available on the internet and in travel agencies outside of the USA and only available to non US or Canada residents).

With each of these you have to consider the pros and cons as if it were a separate trip. The USA Rail Passes are reasonably priced, but crossing the country on trains is fairly slow and filled with dull in-between scenery. If you are a big fan of riding the rails this might be worth looking into though.

The Eurail Passes are fairly expensive and probably only a good idea if, say, you've decided in advance that you'll want to spend two months or so going all over Europe. In this case these can be worthwhile because particularly in Northern Europe the individual tickets are quite expensive.

However, if your plan is to shoot across, or even zigzag across the southern half of Europe then the individual tickets probably won't add up to the cost of the pass itself. Trains in the south tend to be cheaper and by not using a pass you get much more added flexibility. In Spain, for example, trains only connect the largest cities so you might find that buses are the way to go for parts of your route. And buses in Southern Europe are even cheaper than the trains, although they do tend to be slower.

Another new wrinkle in this equation that has popped up in the last few years is the presence of the new discount airlines. Again using Spain as an example, Madrid and Barcelona are quite far apart without many interesting things in between. There is a high-speed train that takes about 5 hours, but costs about the same or even more than a flight. If you buy a flight in advance it might even be substantially cheaper than the train, and obviously it's always at least a little faster.

If you've locked yourself into a rail pass you don't have as many options. While there, you might hear about a bus tour that goes through some interesting small towns, and that might be the most appealing option at the time. There are also some special train fare deals that might save you more money in the long run. For example, in Germany they often have what they call a Happy Weekend ticket, where up to 5 people can travel together for around €33 total on Saturday or Sunday on the local trains. These trains stop at every station, but you can cover great distances for next to nothing with this special.

Can I sail on freight ships?

Evidently there was a time, probably at least a few decades ago, when a fellow could make his way down to a shipping port and soon find himself working on a cargo ship headed to an exotic destination in exchange for room and board on that ship. But now in the age of computerized ships, crazed post-9/11 security, and strict insurance companies this seems to getting close to impossible now.

Still, we've heard about people still actually doing this occasionally. If the sound of five to six days per week of backbreaking manual labor while sailing the high seas appeals to you, it might be possible to pull off a segment or two on your RTW trip. Rumor has it that some ports have bulletin board areas where occasionally captains and potential crewmembers might find each other, but it takes a special type of person to want to travel this way. If you are one of these people and especially if this actually works out for you, by all means let us know. It might be possible, but it's probably not a good idea to plan your trip and your budget assuming you'll be able to pull this off.

There are a few companies that specialize in booking paying passengers on freight ships, but it appears these luxury-free cruises are not cheap or particularly fun. These are probably only a viable option for someone who, for some reason, wants to do a RTW but is too terrified to fly.

What about those air courier services?

Just as the idea of working your way around the world on freight ships is fast becoming an anachronism, the air courier flights thing is nearly dead as well. It seems that in the 1960s or 1970s there was high demand for small cargo or documents to get places so fast that buying them a ticket on a commercial jet was the only way to get them there. So in exchange for giving up his or her checked baggage a passenger could buy the seat from a courier company for a massive discount.

But in the age of Federal Express and ultra-tight airport security it seems that getting cheap tickets in exchange for your luggage allowance is nearly impossible. That hasn't stopped several companies from continuing their membership services where they ask for a yearly fee in order to qualify you for these flights. But of all the people we know who have signed up as a member we don't know any who has actually gotten a good deal on a flight through them. The few flights they seem to offer go to limited destinations and are usually similar in price to normal discount tickets anyway. Too bad.

How far in advance should I buy individual tickets?

The short answer is you should try to buy your onward tickets as soon as you are reasonably sure of when and where you want to go, depending on your mode of travel.

Generally speaking flights go up in price as the date and time of departure draws nearer. Particularly in the age of automated online pricing adjustments, usually flights are offered at their lowest price before any tickets are sold and then the price of the remaining seats creeps up as the plane approaches capacity. It used to be more common that the increases were triggered more by dates (the price goes up with 3 weeks to go, then up again with 1 week to go, etc.) but now it's more common to see price increases based solely on that flight's popularity. This often means you can get a cheaper ticket on an early morning or late night flight than you can on one leaving at a more convenient time.

These pricing schemes are pretty similar around the world, although there are some exceptions, which we will get to in a moment. So as appealing as it sounds to decide on your next destination over breakfast and then be boarding that flight before lunch, this can get very expensive. As discussed in another section, you might still get a cheap ticket on the day of departure if you are willing to fly at really odd hours, but this is something you should consider before you just barrel towards the airport hell bent on hopping the first flight out.

This might be a little different for everyone, but generally the idea of checking out of your hostel at 4 a.m. to make an early flight takes some of the fun out of the night before. And checking out at noon and then having to hang around until a 9 p.m. flight is also less than ideal, partially because you'll be arriving in your next city for the first time late at night. Again, this is just something to keep in mind.

But, as mentioned, there are some exceptions. Flights that don't cross international borders sometimes carry fixed prices, particularly in 2^nd and 3^rd World countries. For example, a flight from Flores (near Tikal) to Guatemala City might be the same price regardless of when you purchase the ticket. And flights between islands in resort areas also can carry a fixed price. If you suspect you might want to take a flight in the future, it's a good idea to do a bit of research as early as you are able to.

And generally speaking, trains and buses tend to work on fixed prices, but there are exceptions to this you should be aware of. Usually high-speed trains work more on an airline pricing model, and this includes the Eurostar trains that run from London through the channel tunnel. Cheap tickets are often available online for substantial discounts if you buy them weeks in advance, while walk-up fares for the same seat can be even higher than a seat on a plane.

All of this advice really points to the same thing, that a bit of research early on can save you a lot of time and money later. But it's your money, not ours, and sometimes spontaneity is priceless. There is no right or wrong way to do this, but we feel it never hurts to keep some of these things in mind.

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