What Does Round Trip Mean? | 5 Types of Fares You Should Know About

What does round trip mean? A round trip, as the name suggests, means traveling from one point to another and then returning back to the same starting point, usually via the same route.

This is considered to be a better way of booking tickets, if you have a fixed schedule, rather than booking two separate one-way tickets. And a round trip ticket generally costs a little less than two one-way tickets.

This works for both domestic and international travel. Airlines provide an option to book a round trip ticket for international flights, and may also give certain discounts or special offers on such bookings.

All you have to do is select the starting point of the journey and the destination.

Next is to fill in the date for the travel to the destination, and then fill in the date when you want to return from the destination.

Some airlines also provide an option to select a particular flight if there are multiple flights at different timings for the same destination.

Once done, you will have booked the tickets both to and from your destination.

While this can be one of the ways to travel, there are few other options which can make your travel convenient, fun, and maybe even cheaper.

Let’s have a look at them.

One way Trip

One of the most preferred ways of traveling is the one-way trip.

It is the easiest to book, and many find it convenient.

A one-way trip simply means that you travel from a starting point straight to the destination.

This is obviously the only way to travel if you are planning on staying at the destination place for an indefinite amount of time, or are moving from one city/country to another.

For shorter distances, a one-way ticket can be one of the cheaper options. But for longer travels or international travels, it may not be the best.

Apart from that, it does provide a little flexibility to the traveler.

If you have traveled to a place, on a one-way ticket, for a scheduled amount of days and wish to extend your trip or cut it short, you have the option to book another one-way ticket from your destination back to your home.

This is one of the advantages of booking a one way trip ticket.

Open Jaw Trip

Open jaw trips are one of the less used ways to travel but are really a very convenient and possibly cheap travel option when you are traveling to more than two different places which are relatively closer to each other, and then have to return back to your home. The traveling pattern usually looks like its name.

An open jaw or a triangular pattern to be precise. For example, you want to travel to Italy and visit a few cities on your trip before returning back.

One way of booking tickets for the trip would be a round trip ticket. But the problem here is, you will have to choose a destination, let’s say Venice, and then wherever you are in Italy, you’ll need to come back to Venice to catch your flight back home. This can be a little cumbersome.

To avoid this, you can book an open jaw ticket.

Which means you travel from your home airport to Venice. And whichever city you are supposed to be on the last day of your trip, book a flight back home from that city. In this case, after landing in Venice, you can catch a flight back from Rome.

This allows you to have a flexible trip and save you the money and the efforts to go back to Venice from Rome.

An open jaw ticket can be easily booked using the multi city booking option on any of the flight booking platforms.

Round the World (RTW) Trip

If you want to travel from one place to another with multiple stops and then back home, a Round the World trip is just what you need.

RTW trips are very beneficial when it comes to long haul trips covering multiple cities or countries.

These types of flights allow you to travel to several different places on a single ticket.

You can book a ticket for a trip to Australia from Europe with a few stops along the trip, or you can choose to travel to 3 or 4 different continents before returning back home.

These flights provide stopovers and no layovers.

This means that at a particular stop, you can go out of the airport and explore the city in the time you have left until your flight out. RTW tickets are known to be cheaper when compared to round trips or multi city tickets.

That’s because your ticket will also include a return back to your home airport.

Many alliances offer such kinds of ticket packages, which also includes a specific plan for every city you have a stop at.

Round Robin Trip

Round robin trips are basically the same as open jaw trips or round the world trips.

They allow you to book multi-stop itineraries on a single booking.

You can choose to travel from your point of origin to one destination and then take a flight back home from another destination.

This is similar to the open jaw booking. You can also choose to Travel to a destination with multiple stops along the trip. But unlike round the world trips, you have the option to choose how many stopovers you want and where.

This way round robin bookings provides a little more flexibility over round the world trips.

They can also save you some money by letting you travel to multiple places on a single ticket.

The trip starts from your point of origin and ends on the same place. Which means you don’t have to book a separate flight back home.

The only issue is that if you wish to extend or cut a trip short, you cannot do that with round robin bookings.

In such a case, you will have to make separate bookings according to your plans.

Multi city Trip

Multi city trips are what covers all the three- open jaw, round the world, and round-robin trips. As the name suggests, multi city trips include stops at multiple cities between your point of origin and your destination.

You can add multiple stops along your trip if you wish to visit those cities, just like you do in around the world booking.

You can also plan to travel to a destination, and return to your home from a different airport, just like an open-jaw trip.

Multi city trips allow stopovers, which are usually longer than 24 hours, where you can go out of the airport and explore.

But it also allows creating layovers, which can be as short as 30 minutes to as long as 23 hours.

Majority of the time, you are not allowed to leave the airport considering the short amount of time. You can book such flights directly via airlines or any agencies.

Depending on the destination and the number of stops or layovers, the prices may vary. Multi city flights can be advantageous if you are planning to take a long trip and want to visit more places with little flexibility.

They also allow you to set your itinerary according to your plan, unlike the planned packages provided on round the world trips by alliances.

Conclusion

Essentially, round the world, open jaw, and round robin trip are very similar to each other and branch out of the multi-city trip system.

All of them, in one way or another, allow you to travel to more than one place on a single booking, and also bring you back to your point of origin.

What kind of trip to choose majorly depends on what kind of trip you have planned.

If you have a limited number of places to visit that are a little closer to each other, an open-jaw trip is perfect for you. But if you want to travel to multiple cities or continents, and be able to spend some time exploring, round-robin or multi-city trips would be the best choice.

In such cases, round the world trips can also be given preference, but if you go with a certain package deal, then it limits your choice in terms of the places you can go to.

If you are not very good at planning a trip or are uncertain of the places to visit and the things to experience once you visit them, then around the world trip is the best choice.

You will not have to worry about selecting the number of places to visit, and the things to do over there.

And lastly, depending on your budget and plans, you can also choose from either a round trip or a one-way trip.

The former allows you to book a trip from your origin point to the destination and back, without having to worry about booking a separate ticket.

Whereas, a one-way ticket is the best when you are uncertain about your return plans.