I am in the process of booking a short DONE4 for travel comencing in August.

The list price ex Australia is A$9,609 + taxes. Do TA's have scope to reduce this fare, or is it a hard and fast cost?

In the past previous TA's have offered better than list price, however the current one is refusing to budge. Will a move of the list price eat there margin, and if so what is a realistic best price I could expect to get?

Years ago when pricing ex-NZ was attractive I bought one from a travel agent in AKL and they volunteered a 2% rebate. Supposedly their commission was 4% at the time, fwiw (this was a large agency). But they had no work to do (I gave them a valid itinerary, with dates/flight numbers).

Doing something similar I used to use a Flight Centre TA and he did give me a price below the published price - but only to match what I found on BestFlights.com.au

recently he has not given discounts to my family in MEL when they purchase RTW tickets.

Two weeks ago Ms QF ExLurker bought a Star RTW in Sydney CBD. Two agents both refused to budge off list price, and both wanted credit card surcharge. Eventually paid list price plus half the credit card surcharge, i.e. 1% instead of 2%.

Ex-NZ still looks very attractive - going by the latest 1 Jul fares, ex-NZ is still in the top 10 cheapest for AONE fares and certainly cheaper than ex-BKK for DONE!

Apart from the LA flight, there're no other other first class seats to/from NZ, together with Y-only domestic flights, there aren't many reasons to buy an AONE ticket in NZ...

Going by the latest July changes, WBZ's spreadsheet indicates the following useful DONE4 prices for Oz residents (AUD's):CMB seem to still be the best place to start...

What about Mauritius especially when you can get a 12 month validity business class return from SYD-MRU on Air Mauritius for $AU2700 (even cheaper from Perth)

Remember that MRU origin xONEx cannot return to MRU -- they must return to Nairobi, Lagos or Accra ... so you have to add in the expense of flying from the OWE endpoint back to MRU or wherever.

I believe they can as of September, when Comair starts their JNB-MRU service (HKG/SYD-JNB-MRU or v.v.)

And they can also return to JNB,VFA,HRE,CPT,DUR,WDH,PTZ and anywhere else that Commair flys from JNB

Absolutely not, unless Comair is also serving the 3 gateway cities (and I suppose they must be serving at least one). The 2nd entry into Africa is only allowed to the 3 specified cities, so you cannot fly LHR-JNB or LHR-CPT (or MAD-JNB, etc) if you originate in MRU! Very important and inconvenient rule (unless this rule has been changed in the past week).

The return to Africa has to be LHR-ACC/whatever you want to do in Africa, probably surface segment to JNB. Likely to be a somewhat expensive one-way ticket (or a long and gruesome land journey).

edited to add that I almost always go eastbound (it is so much more efficient), thus I cannot do HKG-JNB-MRU or SYD-JNB-MRU but have to re-enter from Europe. For westbound the new Comair service does solve the MRU problem nicely, but can it be booked yet?

I noticed that one of the rules on the RTW states that that country of origin can't be any cheaper that the country of purchase but it sounds like most are still getting the good rates out Australia and New Zealand... Since I'm from Seattle, I was thinking about visiting my sister in LA first and then flying from LAX to New Zealand where I would start my RTW.

Can someone give me some ideas on how I get around this minimum fare requirement? I'd like to break my year long trip into two halves and I see that this would be the easiest way but I don't necessarily want to pay the extra amount if I can avoid it.

With the continuing fall of NZ $ against AU $ it is an attractive origin for someone based in Australia - very cheap and easy to get to especially the east coast.

Tellmewheretogo - if you're starting from NZ then you need an NZ TA (or airline office in NZ or make use of the Canada exception).

The "Canada exception" is a Star Alliance bennie not offered for OW RTWs, more's the pity.