Round The World Ticket Or Not?

Once we had agreed on the destinations we would like to travel to, we had to decide whether to buy a Round The World (RTW) ticket or not.

Airline Alliances

We read travel blogs and researched the options offered by various airline alliances, which had many (and different) criteria we had to consider, e.g.:

• Only able to travel in one direction, e.g. from east to west
• Change travel dates, carrier and time of traveling for free, but pay for rerouting
• Travel a certain total number of miles
• Make limited number of stopovers
• Include a limited number of non-air sectors

Via the alliances' travel planning tools, our trip was estimated to cost around CAD$ 8,000 per person. 

Advantages 

• The direction, destinations and timing would be set
• We wouldn't have to decide or discuss where to go next 
• We wouldn't have to spend time keeping an eye on flight prices and booking flights

Disadvantages

• It would cost us between $125 and $200 if we wanted/had to change destination
• We would not have the freedom or flexibility to stay longer or change destination
• We would not be able to use rewards points for some of the flights
• We would have to pay for the flights before we left homeIt is cheaper overall to book your own flights

Freedom and Flexibility
This journey is happening for many reasons, and one of them is importance to experience the freedom to do what we want when we want to do it, and also having the flexibility to be spontaneous, change plans on the spur of the moment and go with flow. Therefore, buying a RTW would defeat this purpose. And we do have the time to wait a day or two for a cheaper flight or catch a flight on short notice. All choices have a price, and we think we will have more fun valuing the unplanned and unexpected. 

And then we booked the flights Vancouver-Munich-Zurich and Amman-Kathmandu - on reward points!

Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape

- Anonymous