By Katy A seasoned budget traveller, Editor Katy has already been to every country in the EU, and is gradually ticking off the rest of the world - when she can bear to leave her cats.

Round-the-world tickets. Remember them? They were the “easy” way to see the world, hopping from continent to continent all on the one booking. You might be surprised to learn that they actually still exist—in fact, both OneWorld and Star Alliance now have fancy tools to help you plan your route.

They’re great if you’re loyal to certain airlines, or have specific dates and destinations in mind. But if price is a factor? Yeah, not so great. The major catch with these tools is that you have absolutely no way of knowing when it’s cheapest to travel, so it’s impossible to take advantage of low fares.

Or what if you want to see a bunch of places in one go, but not actually go all the way around the world? Doesn’t quite work there either. Plus, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d be missing out on so many cool places in between.

And that’s where multi-city trips come in—DIY round-the-world-ish trips for savvy travellers. You can still pick your favourite airlines, but you can also pick your favourite fares. To me, that’s what makes them a winner.

Flight Finder Kash is so enthusiastic about digging up multi-city bargains that she recently wrote up a how-to guide to help the team find the best possible deals. In fact, it’s so handy, that I just had to give you a peek behind the scenes and share the goods…

What is a multi-city trip?

Simple. A multi-city trip is a flight tip that has 2 or more destinations bundled into one trip. Hunting them down can sound daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s actually really fun to put together inspiring itineraries.

The chances of finding a really cheap multi-trip are better when airlines are having sales. If you already have an idea of one destination you’d like to include, keep an eye out for sales in the same region.

For example, if you’re aiming for Europe and easyJet or Aer Lingus are throwing a sale this week, chances are there’s a good fare to be found. On the flip side, if you’re heading to North America and there are super cheap fares with Hawaiian from West Coast USA, that should trigger multi-city alarm bells for heading across the Pacific.

(Editor’s note: If you’re a JFC Premium member, you can get alerts for any of the cities we cover by changing your Flight Settings in your Member’s Lounge or app. So, if you’re planning a trip to Northern Europe, the USA or Canada and want to visit more than one place, it’s worth updating those airports!)

Aligning dates and times

When you’re searching for a multi-city trip, the best thing to do is to check for options with a variety of dates for entry and exit, keeping in mind your connections. That’ll give you the option to get more creative with your itinerary!

Try to be mindful of connecting flights, prioritizing routes that are non-stop to minimize the risk of delays. After all, if a cheap flight means having to shell out extra for a hotel during an overnight layover, is it really a cheap flight any more? Consider the times of travel, too. If it’s only a little extra to fly at 12pm instead of stupid o’clock, it’s worth it.

North America

When travelling to the USA and Canada in particular, bigger airports that have a greater number of connections should be your first stop. Places like New York, Toronto, Miami, Denver, Chicago, Atlanta, Vancouver and San Francisco, for example. The East Coast usually has the cheapest fares from Europe, while the West Coast will get you better prices to Hawaii and Asia.

UK & Europe

The same rules apply when you’re travelling around the UK and Europe—you’ll have a better chance of finding multi-city trips from busy hubs like London, Madrid, Amsterdam, or Paris. These long-haul hubs are the best for connections across to the USA/Canada/South America, and also to Asia.

(Editor’s note: It’s worth mentioning that picking up cheap short-haul flights around the UK and Europe may mean flying out of a different airport than you’d arrive at with a long-haul flight. In cities like London, Paris and Frankfurt, low-cost airlines tend to fly from smaller airports, such as Stansted or Orly.

That’s not a problem if you plan to spend a few days in your first destination, but allow yourself ample time if you want to depart on the same day!)

So where to start?

Now you’ve got the rules of play, let’s make it happen. Here’s an example of a multi-trip that includes England, Austria & France.

Step 1: The first thing you’ll want to do is go to Google Flights. Pick your departure airport, departure date if you have it (or leave it blank to see the cheapest options within the next 6 months) and switch “round-trip” for “one-way”.

Now you have the choice of deciding which region to focus in on, it’s entirely up to you. Just type, e.g., “Asia” into “Where to?” and hit “Explore”.

Here we’ll focus on Europe from New York.

Step 2: Your mission here is to pick an entry point to the continent. In the example below, you can see that London, Paris and Germany are the cheapest options, so the only question is where do you want to start?

Click on your favourite, and look to see if the dates work for you.

Pro tip: It’s also a good idea to keep in mind exit points while you’re building the trip. Where are you aiming for? You can either have your entry and exit points planned out first and connect flights (or buses/trains) from there, or, you can build as you go. Just remember that the larger the hub, the more likely you are to find a cheap flight back.

Step 3: Connect your first dot!

Let’s go with London as an entry point, and from there we can pick the next stop on the itinerary. Now you have two other things to think about: do you want the next leg of the journey to depart from London too, or somewhere else? After all, you might want to travel around the UK.

What about checking Scotland or other UK airports, allowing a few days to make your way there. Or maybe you’re going to hop on the Eurostar to Paris or Amsterdam? This is where it starts to get creative.

Pro tip: You’ll want to open a separate tab for each step of the trip, so you can easily refer back to dates and flight times.

Let’s pick London to Salzburg for the next stage. It’s a popular year-round destination (cue a herd of yodelling Sound of Music fans) and it is one of the cheaper spots to reach if you don’t mind a budget airline. Just remind yourself of all those one bag packing hacks from last week before you book!

Step 4: Connect your second dot

Since we’re already in Austria, you might as well see more than just Salzburg! Let’s allow time to climb an Alp or two, eat some Strudel and hop on a train to Vienna before we continue our multi-trip itinerary from the capital.

But what are we missing? So far, we’ve done the big city, and we’ve climbed every mountain, so now it seems like a nice time to hit the beach… in Nice, of course!

From there, we can make our own way to Paris (on a scenic high-speed train, perhaps?) and we’ll be all set to pick up one of those cheap flights back to NYC. Alternatively, you could skip Nice entirely and fly directly to Paris from Vienna.

Step 5: Sadly, that’s where our adventure ends, and it’s time to plan that final flight in your multi-city trip. You know the drill by now; open up Google Flights, look for non-stop flights from Paris to New York, and pick a date that works with your itinerary.

Last step! Once you’ve played with all your dates and got the best combo for you, put them all together in one multi-city itinerary. And voilà! You’ve made a multi-city trip!

Remember to double-check prices using our Fare Compare tool, as well. Multi-city trips sometimes go even cheaper with Skyscanner!

(Editor’s note: If the trip is still at least a few months out, consider booking the long-haul journeys (e.g. NYC-London, Paris-NYC) but holding off on the short-haul fares until they go lower. Check out our article on The Best Time to Book Flights for some handy rules of thumb that you can apply when looking for the cheapest fares.)

There we have it, the insider’s guide to finding multi-city trips! Yep, I agree, there’s a lot of researching and soooo many tabs involved.

These tips should help you find the best combination for reaching any niche spots you have in mind. Maybe you do like the idea of a DIY round-the-world trip, and that’s completely possible, as Kash showed us just the other day.

But if you’re open to being inspired, we wouldn’t blame you for leaving the hard graft to our Flight Finding gurus!

Thanks so much for your excellent tips and experiences of living the one-bag travel life! We’ve loved seeing your packing lists and pictures, and we’re super impressed by how long you can last out of just one bag, readers. Currently, the crown goes to reader Rhonda, who’s clocking in at 100 days!

We’ll share your best advice next week, but for now, I want to let you in on the most unusual suggestion we received as a one-bag travel must-have. Reader King wrote in with three simple words:

Either King is a big shellfish fan, or this is actually the ultimate travel hack. What other uses can you think of for a shrimp deveining tool? There may be prizes be for the most innovative suggestions!

And now, back to travelling through Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan…

“I went to Uzbekistan in October last year and loved it! I'm vegetarian and also expected food to be difficult but it was actually easier than most of my European travels … There's a tomato and cucumber side salad that's everywhere, which in an emergency makes a meal with the bread. Hotel breakfasts were full of melon, watermelon, apples, grapes, breads, nuts (and non-vegan cheese, meats, yoghurts, eggs and little cakes) so you can always fill up there if in doubt. The only place I struggled was on a 2-day Aral Sea tour. We stopped at a truck stop for lunch one day and our guide recommended for vegetarians the noodles 'without the meat'. This sounded good to me, assuming it would come without the meat, but no… I was supposed to eat around the meat, which was easier said than done. The tour was excellent and would recommend if you get the chance. The stars by the Aral Sea there were incredible at night too. We popped our heads out of the yurt about 3am and ended up outside for about 20 minutes taking it all in. My favourite place was Khiva. It was so chilled, and we were totally unaware the walled city was surrounded by a big modern city! Not mentioned in a single guide to the city. We only had time to explore the walled city, but it was so relaxed and beautiful. They do a ticket for all the main attractions, approach it with caution. There's a handful of gems and a load that were quite frankly terrible, I've seen better displays in primary schools than some of the 'museums'! But I guess that's how they get you through the door. In Samarkand, my favourite place was the Shah-i-Zinda, so beautiful. The Ulugbek Observatory was a bit of a non-event, with very few bits explaining the site, nothing in English, just Russian and Uzbek, and no one to explain it, so we didn't really understand most of it. The Registan was great and well worth a visit. That said, every place we went delivered, and I'd go back in a heartbeat (Tashkent, Nukus, Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand). A word of warning though... Although it's quite a mixed place ethnically, that mix doesn't include black people. If you are black or dark brown, expect a LOT of attention. It was never unkind, cruel or hands on, but we were regularly stopped for photos and chats. (I reckon a good 5-10 pics a day). If that doesn't sound like something you'd be comfortable with, then maybe avoid. But if you are happy to get a taste of being a celeb for the holiday, then go for it! Also, most people haven't heard of England, they know it as the UK (and will assume you're American!) Have a wonderful trip. It's an incredible part of the world.” - Erica

What a review! Thanks so much for sharing your experiences, I really can’t wait!

Now this is definitely valuable intel. Thanks for the warning, Pauline!

All the important (or silly, or strange) travel news from across the web this week.

• Bad news for late-night snackers on tour—pizza and gelato in Milan could become the next victims of overtourism.
• In exciting news for stateside air passengers, the US government has mandated new rules on providing automatic refunds for delayed flights, as well as more transparent information about additional fees.
• In case you need something to brighten up your weekend, take a look at the most colourful hotels in the world.
• And finally, there’s a new list of must-see sights in New York! If you’re a Swifty, that is!
  Take a walk in T-Swizzle’s shoes and spend your days boating on Central Park Lake, looking for your lost love on Coney Island, or coming up with your own true crime podcast at Olive Garden.
  Don’t worry if the Big Apple isn’t on the cards this summer, this unassuming London pub is now just as important to tick off any Swift world tour!