One plane ticket, multiple stops, one year to complete the trip

Updated June 2025

I'm writing this from a business class lounge in Rome, not even halfway through our 2-month around-the-world honeymoon trip that we booked using Amex points. I'm on sabbatical and my husband is working remotely, so we decided to tackle the holy grail of points travel: ANA's Star Alliance Round-The-World award flights in BUSINESS CLASS.

We booked Madrid → Zurich → Rome → Athens → Istanbul → Bangkok → Beijing → Tokyo → Honolulu → Toronto → Lisbon → Madrid on ONE single plane ticket for 145,000 Amex points each. Since we're currently living this trip, I wanted to share exactly how we did it, what it actually costs, and everything we learned along the way.

Why ANA's Round-The-World Award is Amazing

ANA's Round-The-World award is genuinely one of the best deals in travel. You can fly business class around the world for as little as 115,000 miles when your total travel distance is under 22,000 miles. To put that in perspective, United would charge you 80,000+ miles just for a round-trip to Asia in business class. The total amount of points required is tiered based on the total travel distance, and you can reference the below chart.

So for our Business Class trip, we spent 145,000 points EACH to secure our ticket. With that amount of mileage, we secured 8 stopovers, have a whole year to complete our trip, and fly on some of the world's best airlines including Singapore, Turkish, and ANA itself. It's like getting multiple international trips rolled into one award.

What You Should Know Before Getting Started

This is an intermediate-level points strategy. It took us several months of research and planning, plus some patience during the booking process. But don't let that scare you off - the results are incredible.

Here's what makes this different from regular award bookings:

You book by phone only. ANA requires you to call for these awards. The agents are helpful once you get to the right department. It took us TWO HOURS over the phone to book our flights. This is because you can’t really check for the actual availability online. If one or two cities you want to visit are not available, you have to be flexible with either the dates or cities, or both.

Award availability takes some hunting. Just because you see a flight available on one Star Alliance website doesn't guarantee ANA can book it. Different programs have access to different inventory.

Taxes and fees vary by airline. Our final cost was $680 per person in fees - some airlines like Turkish and Singapore have minimal surcharges, while others like Lufthansa can add $500+ per ticket.

Distance determines your price. ANA prices these awards based on the total distance of all your flight segments. Plan efficiently to stay in lower pricing tiers.

How We Made It Happen: Our Step-by-Step Process

Step 1: Getting the Points

We used the Amex Platinum 150,000-point sign-up bonus (not always available). Here's the honest breakdown:

Amex Platinum annual fee: $695 each = $1,390. Honestly worth it for how much we’ve traveled and used the lounges in 2024.
Minimum spend requirement: $6,000 each in 6 months
Our strategy: We opened these cards specifically with this trip in mind.

While the annual fee is significant, when you compare it to $15,000+ for paid business class tickets around the world, it's an incredible value.

Step 2: Transferring Points

We chose to fly with ANA Airlines as our Amex points transfer to ANA at a perfect 1:1 ratio. We transferred our 145,000 points about two weeks before booking, which gave us time to finalize our routing without rushing. It does take some time for the points to transfer over so budget those days in your planning.

Important note: Amex transfers are one-way only, so make sure you're committed to this program before transferring.

Important Timing Update

ANA announced they're discontinuing new Star Alliance Round-The-World awards after June 23, 2025. Existing tickets will still be honored, but no new bookings after that date. Check other participating airlines for their booking methods!

What this means: If you've been considering this trip, now is the time to start planning. This incredible program won't be around much longer.

Step 3: Planning Your Dream Route

This is where the fun begins! Your itinerary must cross both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, travel in one direction (east or west), and include up to 8 stopovers (more or less depending on the actual route).

Keep in mind that the availability of flights & dates for each destination has to be confirmed via phone. This is where Flexibility is KEY because if “Sorry, Paris isn’t available, what about Istanbul?” happens, you gotta say YES.

After two hours on the phone with ANA Airlines where the agent almost hung up on us, this is our final routing, not including our separate flights booked within each official stopover :

Madrid (MAD) → Zurich (ZUR) - Swiss
Rome (FCO) → Athens (ATH) - Aegean
Athens (ATH) → Istanbul (IST) - Aegean
Istanbul (IST) → Bangkok (BKK) - Turkish
Bangkok (BKK) → Beijing (PEK) - Air China
Tokyo (NRT) → Honolulu (HNL) - ANA
Toronto (YYZ) → Lisbon (LIS) - TAP
Lisbon (LIS) → Madrid (MAD) - TAP

Total distance: Approximately 22,500 miles Cost: 145,000 ANA miles + around $1,000 in taxes/fees per person

Maximizing Each Stopover

Here's where this gets really exciting: between each of those booked flights, we're exploring multiple countries on our own using budget airlines, trains, and buses. This is how you turn 8 stopovers into 15+ countries:

Zurich stopover: Traveling overland to Munich, Nice, and Paris before catching our Rome flight

Athens stopover: Flying to Santorini for a few days, then back to Athens

Bangkok stopover: Taking a budget flight to Hanoi, then traveling overland back to Bangkok

Tokyo stopover: Quick trip to Korea before our Honolulu flight

The beauty of ANA's program is that you have up to one year to complete your journey, so you can spend weeks or even months in each region. We're essentially using the Round-The-World ticket as our main transportation backbone, then filling in the gaps with our own mini-trips.

Step 4: Finding Award Availability

For initial research, here's what worked well:

For United flights: United.com shows good availability, look for "Saver" level awards

For other Star Alliance flights: Each airline's website is most reliable

Here's the key insight: after doing initial research online, we found the most accurate way to check availability was calling ANA directly. We spent over 2 hours on the phone with an agent going through different routing options, checking availability in real-time, and adjusting our plans.

We had to stay flexible with everything - not just dates, but even which countries we flew to. Our original plan did not include Japan or Honolulu, but there was NO availability of any flights from Beijing back to the US!!

Pro tip: Stay open to changes. Award availability shifts constantly, and sometimes the alternatives end up being even better than your original plan.

Step 5: The Booking Experience

We called ANA at 8 AM EST on a Tuesday for the shortest hold times. Here's how it went:

When you call, immediately say "I want to book a Star Alliance Round-The-World award." This gets you to the right department faster.

The actual booking took about 90 minutes. Our agent manually calculated distances and checked each segment for availability. When a flight or destination was not available, he walked us through alternative options. This part took the most time as it’s not a simple online check.

The Real Investment: What We Actually Paid

Points: 145,000 Amex → ANA miles each (290,000 total) Taxes and fees: A little over $1000 Each.
Amex annual fees: $695 per card

Total out-of-pocket: $2,750 for two people in business class around the world

For comparison, here's what we would have paid for similar flights:

Madrid-Bangkok business class: ~$3,000 each
Bangkok-Tokyo business class: ~$2,000 each
Tokyo-Hawaii business class: ~$4,000 each
Plus all our other segments: Easily $20,000+ total

Is This Worth It for You?

Absolutely worth it if:

You love planning and research (it's actually fun!)
You're flexible with dates and destinations
You genuinely want to visit multiple regions
You enjoy the challenge of award travel
You have existing credit points saved up!

Consider other options if:

You have very specific dates or destinations in mind
You prefer simple, straightforward bookings
You just want to visit one or two places with more time to spend in each.

Our Experience So Far

Writing this from our trip, it’s definitely a trip of a lifetime but also a very exhausting experience! Travel days are most hectic with navigating trains, metros, and airports while carrying our suitcases with us, but the airport lounges allow us to refresh and rest up before our flights.

While we prefer spending extended time periods in a single country to explore different cities to a deeper level, the goal of THIS trip was to see the world to figure out which countries we want to return to in the future.

Yes, it required patience and planning, but experiencing the blue waters in the South of France, soaking in the history & ruins of ancient Rome, and now on our way to the views of Santorini, it’s totally worth it.

If you're thinking about doing something like this or maybe even have the points readily available, I'd encourage you to start researching and blocking off your calendars! The planning process is part of the adventure, and the payoff is incredible.

KEY LINKS

Comment below or send me an email if you have any questions!

Fly Around the World for Less Than 150K Points