Budget Travel - Home Hub type Round the world tickets - do they really exist?

morning!
My partner and I are planning our mature gap year and read about 'home hub' or 'home base' or some such type tickets. Essentially round the world tickets only with constant return to the home base so say out to America, back to London, out to Asia back to London, out to Africa back to London etc...

This would suit us well as due to aging families we were planning to travel 3 months, back for a few weeks and then to another corner of the world - rinse/repeat/etc....

Sadly despite reading about this in various books I cannot find any reference to this on actual travel sites...Does anyone have any info on this or where i can at least carry on searching?

Btw,,,I do appreciate help. I only stumbled across this forum in yet another google for info on this I am greatly impressed!!

xtina

this is quite simple? So essentially all you have to do is start your rtw trip in another country. For example i live in the US...and officially start my trip in NZ. A sample routing would be US-NZ-South America- and back to the US where i would go back home for a few months before starting off again and head to Europe, Asia and back to NZ and then back home.
is this what your question is? if you want to go home more frequently you can purchase 2 rtw tickets and link them up though at a higher cost.

check out this resource written (http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/round-the-world-plane-ticket/) by a fellow ft'r.

booking a rtw is easy using the oneworld booking tool. (http://www.oneworld.com/ow/flight-info/plan-and-book-your-itinerary) you can make your reservation online! however, i don't know if you're affiliated with any airline specifically so it might not be of use to you.

IMHO i don't know if a rtw ticket would be right for your travel plans as usually you have to continue going in one direction..unless you get multiple tickets. Another suggestion is to redeem miles and go back to London when you need and just pick up where you left off.

Welcome to FlyerTalk xtina !

There's a thread or two about doing a round the world on LCCs (Low Cost Carriers - there's Help in upper right of this page that will help you with this).

As aaron1262 points out, you can do a RTW on an alliance. IIRC, *A and SkyTeam also offer this on their web sites, and of course you can always call one of the airlines and ask about it.

I would also suggest looking at Mileage Run forum, where you will find many low fares and suggestions for finding them. In particular search for VPescado's How to constuct a Mileage Run. While you probably don't want to do an MR, lots of good info on finding fares, and you may well construct your own RTW cheaper than what's available as a package.

EmailKid

Welcome to FlyerTalk xtina !

There's a thread or two about doing a round the world on LCCs (Low Cost Carriers - there's Help in upper right of this page that will help you with this).


it's still difficult to use LCC to cross oceans not many options. but it is doable.

morning!'home hub' or 'home base' or some such type tickets. Essentially round the world tickets only with constant return to the home base so say out to America, back to London, out to Asia back to London, out to Africa back to London etc...

I haven't ever heard of these kinds of RTW tickets. But then again, as a budget traveler as opposed to a value traveler (i.e. $400 LAX-LHR is budget...$1200 for J class LAX-LHR is value), I don't pay much attention to RTW tickets--they're great deals for what they offer, but they're hardly cheap in and of themselves.

Anyway, the previous posters have given good advice (though it looks like they didn't actually answer this part of your question). Hopefully someone comes along who has indeed heard of these before and can help you!

Best of luck!

it's still difficult to use LCC to cross oceans not many options. but it is doable.

Oasis went under, but Air China now flies to England, alas to Stanton. And Air Transat flies (may be charters) from Canada to Europe.

Anyway, the previous posters have given good advice (though it looks like they didn't actually answer this part of your question).

Upon re-reading OP, this appears to be a series of MRs rather than RTW. Since OP wants to return to home base, then it would make sense to find an airport that consistently has lowest int'l fares, probably coupled with low cost of living when spending the few months between trips.

EmailKid

hello guys

wow thanks for all the replies!

Both lonely planet and rough guides in their 'round the world' books specifically talk about tickets that are RTW - so you can have all the intra-continental flights in additon to the inter-continental flights but still return to the home hub frequently. Not really multiple return flights. But I have not found any indication of their existence other than in those books - hmm gives you a clue about their worth as a resource ;)

The suggestion starting a RTW in another placeis a great idea though aaron1262 thank you!

thanks again...I may just get a multistop one and see if I can get the miles up enough for a second flight somewhere else :)
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