Round The World Tickets
Off-season destinations work well on a RTW trip
If you are early in your itinerary planning for your round the world trip, you might be tempted to try your absolute best to string the cities and areas together in a way that gives you the most possible visits during “high season.” That’s understandable, and since you’ll be going to so many places it might not be too difficult, but it also might not be wise for a couple different reasons.
One fairly obvious concern is cost. If you spend summer in Europe and then make your way to South America just in time for its own summer, you’ll be paying peak hotel rates and airfares each step of the way. Since expenses are such a concern for nearly every RTW traveler, you might actually be better off trying to do the exact opposite as the above.
The other part of this issue is that when you travel to a place during its peak season you’ll have the most competition for hostel beds and cheap hotel rooms. Those of us who like to wing it and book places as we go on a RTW can be severely hampered by this situation because it means either booking beds way in advance or sometimes having to stay in undesirable places or neighborhoods.
Traveling to places in the off-season, on the other hand, gives you full flexibility in addition to lower prices for just about everything. If you arrive in Venice in February, you can pretty much just show up and choose a bed at one of the hostels there, or you might even find a budget hotel that is so empty that their rooms are almost as cheap as the hostels.
The other factor to consider when deciding which places to hit in-season and which to hit in the off-season is the crowd and chaos level. Again with Venice, Italy as an example, if you ask 5 people who’ve only visited there in summer what they thought of the place, most or all will tell you that it’s interesting but not worth it due to insane crowds and outrageous prices. But ask 5 people who’ve gone there outside of summer and they’ll probably all tell you the place is fantastic and they don’t know why so many people complain about it.
London is another example of this. From June through August, the entire city center feels like being in a crowded theme park on a weekend, except you are trapped inside for the duration. All the main attractions are just so jammed with people that you’ll wind up skipping things like the (free) British Museum or a trip by Buckingham Palace, all because the crowds are so thick that enjoyment is impossible.
Of course you have to sort this out on a region-by-region basis, and it’s impossible to visit each city at just the right time, but you should really think twice about trying to hit peak seasons in big cities. You’ll get a bit stressed dealing with the huge crowds while on a RTW, so visiting many places when they are a bit empty can really help you from getting burned out, and keep your expenses lower as well.
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