RyanG

Hi guys,

I have been looking into this and see that there aren't that many companies out there that provide guided tours around the World. Would you do a RTW trip with a group of about 15? The accomodation would be 4 and 5 star and you would be flying Business Class. JFK-LHR-JNB-CPT-LVI-JNB-HKG-SYD-HNL-SFO would be the itinerary. You would be looking at about $17500 per person and it would be a 32 day tour.

Just interested to see how many people with the economy the way it is right now would be interested in doing this type of thing?

Thanks for any advice or comments

zitsky

That seems pretty cheap for such a long trip, especially in business class and 4-5 star hotels.

Braindrain

IMO, you might be asking the wrong group. As a bunch of people addicted to collecting airline miles/hotel points, most would be loathe to spend that much personal money.

Add that with some relaxed reward routing rules (at least for AC) and I can do a private RTW biz itin with top-ranked international hotels (and sometimes scoring suite upgrades) for a fraction of that cost.

Pickles

Really? The routing proposed by the OP is a DONE5 in J, which is probably 9-10K USD, and that's for the air ticket alone. That leaves 7-8K to pay for a month's worth of hotel, averaging 220-250 USD per night. If the acommodations are really 4-5*, this is not a bad deal, especially if the tour includes guides and other incidentals (e.g. transportation from hotel to airport).

You tell us how you would do this "for a fraction of that cost."

And would I take such a tour? No. For the cities involved, I'd rather plan it myself, even if it ends up costing more (and it probably would).

Braindrain

Easily done, if you have the points. That was my point for saying:

RyanG

Thank you for your comments!

I know that 99% of the people on this forum do want to maximize there miles, or spend them on such trips (as they are an amazing way to spend miles) but my line of thought way that there would be atleast 15 people in the U.S.A or Europe who would spend that much to do a trip when they had the time and didn't want the inconvinience of planning such a trip. Also to be able to do it in a group and have guides and private buses in each city etc.

xanthuos

Points have a cash value to most posters here, so it's not really a "fraction of the cost" as you say...simply a less out of pocket cost.

Braindrain

Umm.... less out of pocket cost = fraction of the cost. (It's no secret that everyone and their dog on FT know Biz reward trips are the best deals out there.)

I never said it was free.

Mr H

Different people look for different things from trips.

If I had Ł10,000 to spend on a holiday, I'd be looking to go to more adventurous places (of the places you mention, only HKG is non-English speaking to any great extent - assuming you would be staying in the centre of CPT and JNB). For an RTW, I'd expect to see different languages and cultures. If I had 30 days, I'd not want to do a RTW - perhaps overland through a couple of countries in a remote part of the world and a stopover on the way there and back. And if I did a RTW, I'd want to do it over a longer period of time.

For me, flying business class is an avoidable drain on resources and 4 or 5 star hotels are nice once in a while but certainly not a necessity. If I am travelling, I like a hotel that feels part of the place I'm in, not a part of Western Europe. My trips typically mix it up between top end, mid range and budget.

You mention LVI. If I were doing this trip, I'd rather go to VFA and do a day trip to the Zambian side of the falls rather than vice versa. I know - I went to both last year.

Would I pay Ł10,000 on a RTW - you betcha! Would I do it as part of an organized tour - perhaps. Would I do it with your itinerary - probably not.

xanthuos

No because to ME and many other FTers, using points/miles is still a cost. Just because I don't lay out cold hard cash doesn't make it "cost" any less. Just the form of currency is different.

SanDiego1K

There are several companies that offer/have offered RTW luxury trips. My memory of cost is in the $40K and up range. Here is a blog about a $65K trip offered by the WWF:

http://www.greenaironline.com/news.php?viewStory=287

And Abercombie & Kent:

http://www.abercrombiekent.com/trave...Jet_Travel.cfm

http://www.abercrombiekent.com/trave...rivate-Jet.cfm

Braindrain

And in almost every case imaginable, the cost of those miles are going to be significantly less than paying $$ for the same ticket.

Is there some calculus involved here?

Can you tell me your methodology of costing?

UnoriginalGuy

I can sell you one hundred cows for $100,000

Farmer 1: I can do it for a fraction of the cost!
Farmer 2: Oh how is that?
Farmer 1: I'll buy $50,000 worth of Chickens and trade it for $50,000 worth of cows. Then purchase the other 1/2 at cash value thus costing me ONLY $50,000.
Farmer 1: That is genius! How did I never think of this method to save 1/2 on cows?!
Farmer 2: I am just that smart...

PS - Might be a silly analogy, except that is what people are discussing in this thread.

CPRich

According to many here on FT, the "value" of miles for an international J ticket is $15K+, because that's the highest cost they can find for a last minute J flight from JFK-NRT, or a similar high-demand route. If these are what the miles are worth when FTers are bragging about the great earning/redemption they made, then the same method applies when valuing spend.

In the simplest case, the cost of the miles being what you can buy them directly for from the airline is certainly less than the value of the ticket redeemed in almost every case, or everyone would be flying on miles every flight.

In reality, the situation is somewhere in the middle. A *A RTW ticket is 300k miles (iirc), or $6-8K.

Braindrain

Sigh....

Best case scenario: Person A does exclusively biz travel (on employer's dime). The miles received from taking the flight cannot be accrued by any other method. There is no actual financial "cost" to Person A for receiving the miles. Same rationale for the hotel associated with the trip. Arguably, it's not costing the employer any more money than normal assuming Person A has followed corporate travel guidelines. So, Person A can redeem for a *A RTW Biz ticket and only have an outlay of the associated taxes. Arguably, there are no associated taxes with redemption of hotel points.

While the average person has a variation of the above scenario, it's still going to cost less than the average $ of a biz ticket to whatever destination is being taken.



Do I really have to explain the obvious?