Trip Planner
The old BootsnAll trip planner is gone. What it did - turn a list of places into a route somebody will actually sell you - still needs doing, so here is how.
Planning a two-week holiday and planning a six-month trip are not the same activity, and most planning advice is written for the first one. A single round trip is a purchase. A route with six stops is a construction, and the order you put the stops in changes the price by more than any coupon ever will.
Pick the stops before the dates
Start with the places that are the reason for the trip. Usually there are three, occasionally four, and the rest of the list is stuff you added because it was nearby on a map. Write down the three. Everything after this gets easier, because a route is a shape connecting a small number of fixed points, and it is not a shape at all when there are fourteen.
Then get the seasons right, which is the one constraint that cannot be negotiated later. Monsoon, high season and the two weeks the whole country is on holiday will each rewrite your order for you.
The order is the price
Going west is usually cheaper than going east, backtracking across an ocean twice is what blows the budget, and one long overland leg in the middle of a continent often saves more than every other decision combined. None of this shows up in a search box, because search boxes price the route you already typed.
This is also why you plan the route before you buy any of it. Bought one flight at a time, a six-stop trip is six separate purchases with no relationship to each other. Priced as one route, it is a single fare, and it is normally the cheaper of the two by a wide margin.
Book the flights early, the rest late
Flights are the part that gets more expensive and less available the longer you wait, and the part that pins the trip down. Beds, trains and everything else you can sort a week ahead from the road - see hostels and hotels for where to sleep in between.
Where the route gets priced
BootsnAll doesn't sell tickets. AirTreks builds and prices multi-stop routes, which is the same job the old trip planner was pointed at, done by people who do it every day. Bring the three places and the rough months; they will tell you what the order should be.
If you'd rather read first, the round the world section is the long version of all of this, and international airfare covers how the fares themselves are built.
From the archive
- Why Planning a Multi-Stop Trip Shouldn't Be Difficult
Why the search boxes you already know can't price this trip.
- Deciding Where to Go
Turning a list of everywhere into a list of six places.
- How to Build Your RTW Route
The order of the stops is most of the price.
- Getting the Most Value with Your Route
Where to fly, where to take the bus, and how to tell.
- 5 Trip Ideas To Inspire Your Planning
Five routes that work, if you'd rather start from one.
- Affordable Round the World Routes
The same idea, sorted by what it costs.
- A Classic Round the World Trip
The default westward loop, and why it's the default.
- The Evolution of Planning a Big Trip
How the planning changes between deciding and departing.
- 13 Ways to Beat Travel Planning Burnout
For month four, when the spreadsheet stops being fun.