Why your “one big trip” might be better as two destinations

Reading Time: 3 min

If you’re already flying to the other side of the world… maybe you should fly even farther!

I know that may sound outlandish at first blush, but hear me out.

Unless you think your very next trip will be the one that you hang up your suitcase and call it a travel career, you can safely assume that there will always be more places you want to visit. In that case, every next trip is an opportunity to bundle and save.

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In some instances, it’s cheaper and more practical to fly round-trip to a destination. In other cases, you’re bound by time in an inflexible way that makes side trips or extended jaunts impossible.

If, however, you have wiggle room in your schedule (and especially if you keep an ongoing list of must-see destinations), you shouldn’t book a trip without doing a bit of multi-city investigating first.

Let’s use a real-world example to explain the multi-city strategy.

This year, my family is flying to Tahiti. Rather than flying round-trip from our home airport in Raleigh, I’m using this as an exercise to evaluate if we should also tack on some other far-flung locale before or after.

Calm your mind before wheels up

Headspace is like having a meditation coach in your carry-on, with guided sessions that make it easier to unwind on planes, reset after long travel days, and actually fall asleep in unfamiliar hotel beds. Whether you have 3 minutes at the gate or 20 minutes before bed, you’ll find structured courses and quick exercises to help you stress less, sleep better, and stay present wherever you are.

Make your next trip more mindful

Step one is to visit the Wikipedia page of Faaʼa International Airport in Tahiti. Step two is to scope out the Destinations section to see if there are any nonstop flights to locales that also happen to be on our personal must-see travel list.

Turns out, Tokyo is in the center of this Venn diagram — there’s a nonstop flight between Tahiti and Tokyo, and Tokyo is on our list of must-see places.

Given that we have flexibility before our hotel booking commences in French Polynesia, I can use the Multi-City flight finder functionality in Google Flights to check pricing on a flight that first travels from Raleigh to Tokyo, then from Tokyo to Tahiti roughly one week later. Then, I’d compare the cost (and the travel time!) of the multi-city itinerary to a pair of roundtrip itineraries: one between Raleigh and Tahiti, and the other between Raleigh and Tokyo.

In my case, I found that the multi-city option saves around $300 compared to a pair of round-trips. Plus, we’d save around 24 total hours of travel, along with miscellaneous extra fees like fuel and parking for two trips instead of one. The big idea: When two bucket-list destinations share a nonstop connection, treat them as one trip.

For this one, we’re still debating whether to combine the trips or keep them separate, as it does make packing more challenging. Nevertheless, I’d encourage you to try this with an upcoming trip and see what you find. Best case? You save a bit of cash and take action on checking one more must-see locale off of your travel list.

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