Hi Charlsea—although the airlines do sell pre-packaged RTW tickets, we find that it’s much cheaper to piece together our student fares to get you exactly where you need to go. The airline RTW tickets can be more restrictive because they can’t include all sectors you want to travel, and they usually make you travel in one direction. As far as whether you should buy it all now, or wait on some, keep in mind entry requirements of the countries you are visiting. For example, if you enter Australia and you don’t have your onward ticket, you may be denied entry, so you need to at least book onward sectors in advance. Another pro to pre-booking is that you have pre-paid the tickets, and airfare is usually the most expensive part of RTW trips—if you’ve already pre-paid the airfare, you don’t have to worry about not having money to buy the next ticket later. Keep in mind that many of our student tickets are refundable and date changeable for relatively low amounts.
The cons to buying ahead are that you may not know your itinerary after the first few countries, and you don’t want to pay for a ticket you are never going to use, even if you can refund it for a fee. Plus, it depends on how long you are traveling, because we may not have updated prices at the moment if it’s for something far in the future like next summer or beyond, though we will get most of those rates soon.
We love helping to plan RTW itineraries, though, so please feel free to give us a call and we can help you get started. The email to my branch is gwu@statravel.com or you can call me at 800-210-7685. Jennifer

Hi Charlsea-first have an amazing adventure! I actually spent a year traveling New Zealand so if you have any questions just let me know. I gave a mini description of some of my favorite town/cities in New Zealand so you can check them out under New Zealand-answers

I used to live in Hawaii as well! Beautiful beaches and blue skies…...alex