Hi everyone - I'm pretty savvy at finding "vanilla" type flight deals (OW, RT, Open Jaw). But am needing to try to find some premium deals for a RTW trip.
I know there's plenty of hacks and sweet spots, but struggling to get some direction where to start looking.
Looking for cash fares, not redemptions.

I have the cities that I definitely want to travel, so this is less an open-question, but where to search/price to find a good deal for a premium fare?

Starting in Melbourne (MEL) to Kuala Lumpur (KUL).
KUL to Toronto (YYZ).
YYZ to London (LHR, LGW).
London to Hong Kong (HKG).
HKG back to MEL (or back to KUL).

Where do you suggest I start pricing/searching? Skyscanner? Google Flights? ITA Matrix? Travel Agent? Specific airline websites? Would love some direction / tips for those that have maybe booked a similar RTW trip before!

 

Is there a particular alliance you'd want to credit to?

Possibly worth speaking to nufnuf77

 

yes happy to - the oneworld fares from Tokyo come to mind

 

I'm interested to know the outcome of this booking. Can you share what the outcome and options taken? Thanks.

 

Finnair are known to give some amazing rtw Fares. The complicated part is finding the required fare class for each of the segments at the same time as fare bucket availability is constantly changing not just from fares being ticketed or airlines pulling and then restocking availability, but also from agents around the world holding onto availability for fares that may never get ticketed. For round the world fares the advantage an agent has is to be able to hold onto fare segments possibly over days while trying to put the jigsaw together. (each fare has a ticketing time limit, which can be a number of days) while checking back and forth to see if the fare bucket on the segment they want becomes available. It's really annoying having spent time putting one together only for one segment not have the fare bucket available making it impossible to ticket. being reasonably flexible on the dates gives better possibility of getting a good RTW. You can have a play here https://rtw.oneworld.com/rtw/

 

Oneworld's RTW fares are generally the same across airlines, whether you book with Finnair, AA, BA, etc. You can book in real time with the tool you mentioned. The AA RTW desk also turns these around relatively quickly, so I haven't found fare bucket availability to alter dramatically from day-to-day.