Routing a Multi-Country Trip: Three Strategies That Actually Work

I made three trips before I got the concept of routing for a multi-country trip correct. The first was a hub-and-spoke model from Bangkok but in reality it became 7 flights around SE Asia and nearly killed me. The second was an open-jaw route across Eastern Europe that would have gotten me kicked out of Schengen because I got my days wrong. The last was a loop through Patagonia that, due to a silly misreading of the map, ended up wasting 4 days traveling back to a point that I did not need to return to in the first place. I’ve since learned that how you route a trip is way more important than the way you pick your visas or how you’ve budgeted for the trip. A bad route will quickly suck up your days, burn your money on flights between cities and soon enough cause you to get tired of traveling – or what I’ve started to call “transit fatigue.” Three basic strategies to route a trip covering more than one country. Each has its own fail point.

Flying Hubs and Spokes. This works for countries that have good rail connections between major centers. Also if there is a big event or business meeting then creating a flying hub around the center of the event (the anchor) allows people to easily depart and return from various locations. Iberia from Madrid makes for a great flying hub for flying spokes into the Iberia region. Similarly many train lines traverse across the main island of Honshu in Japan allowing for a flying hub from Tokyo to service various other locations on the island. In the Southeast Asia region Bangkok is a flying hub to many locations; but all the spokes would be long-haul flights rather than ground trips – thus each long-haul flight would add up very quickly and not be efficient for a large number of locations. In general spokes over 3 hours of ground travel become inefficient and no longer work as flying hubs and spokes.

A Linear route or Open-jaw route, also known as a Transit route, is when you fly into one location and out of another. A common example is when you fly into City A and out of City Z. You travel in one direction only. The Linear route is ideal for countries with good ground transportation (trains, buses) between cities, countries that are long and narrow from north to south (for example, Italy), and those that want to ‘travel through’ a region as opposed to ‘touristing around a central hub’ and returning to the starting point. The Spain Camino is an excellent example of a Linear route, the Vietnam train from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh another, the infamous Trans-Mongolian route a third. This type of route fails when the traveler falls ill and they are miles from a familiar airport, and fails even more when the traveler regrets not spending more time in a particular location.

Loop: Fly in and out of one city and travel in a circle on the ground in between cities. This is perfect for a region in which open-jaw flights are extremely expensive. Also great when planning a trip that ends back at your airport of origin after a few weeks, as you will really be able to coast as you make your way back to your departure point. The author recently did a circle route out of Buenos Aires that made its way through parts of Patagonia before returning to B Aires. He recently also took a beautiful Garden Route type of trip out of Cape Town that followed the Southern coast of South Africa for a week or so before returning to CPT. Again, don’t apply this type of planning to a very linear route (like the Trans-Mongolian) where all the “extra” travel time between your points will be strictly transit.

I last worked out a hub-and-spoke from Madrid in March 2024 for a shortish trip. One of the advantages of working out the routing in this way is that you can plan trains as well as flights. The trains from Madrid to Granada, Seville and San Sebastian all took less than five hours and cost less than sixty euros each way. If I had worked out a routing for this same trip as a linear then I’d have added in two or three extra nights of transiting, checking in and out of two hotels and repacking two bags. No thanks.

After you have settled on a type of route, then you can super impose your visa strategy. If you are traveling within the Schengen area then you need to remember that you are only allowed to spend 90 days within any 180 day period in the Schengen region. So for example traveling from France to Switzerland to Germany and then returning to France would use up your Schengen days. Traveling to non-Schengen countries such as the UK or Albania would extend your days for traveling in the Schengen area. Countries in Southeast Asia such as Thailand, Laos and Vietnam all have different visa requirements and restrictions. For example Thailand allows for a 30 day visa on arrival for most nationalities. In South America the Mercosur countries allow for a 90 day visa for entry but the requirements for a visa to enter Brazil are different for different passports and even then some nationalities are subject to a reciprocity fee.

One more thing. The mistake costs nights in transit, last-minute internal flights and energy while you are trying to recover from the first of these expenses as if they were required for the trip as it was planned. None of these is included in your initial budget for your around-the-world trip. They show up in week three of your solo trip, your team trip, or your and your partner’s trip when you wish you were finished with your travels and could be home with your team or with your partner or back to being a solo traveler.

The method of choice for a seasoned traveler such as myself to ensure that such costly mistakes do not occur is to physically draw out the route of a potential trip on a map and work out how long it will take to get from place to place as well as how long each destination will take. Likewise, mark the expiration dates of visas for countries that require pre-arranged travel authorization as well as those that can be obtained upon arrival. In the end, it’s simple enough to ensure that a route chosen for a trip is one that is going to fit the agenda of a planned trip instead of the other way around. Half the mistakes that I outlined at the start of this article could have been avoided by laying out a potential itinerary on a map prior to booking any flights before wasting a bunch of money on incorrect and unnecessary travel plans.

Two more common mistakes: combining route shapes (i.e. travel in a line to begin and then return in a loop to conclude), and overestimating the penalty for routing mistakes prior to planning. Travelers who split their time in country between linear and loop route types note that the former allows for speedy travel through the middle part of their trip while the latter offers the possibility for a slow and leisurely return to the airport for their flight home. The cost of flexibility on the part of the traveler for the routing of their trip, is generally very small when measured against the very large gains from planning the routing of a trip. Booking the first and last international flight of a trip (i.e. entering and exiting a country) and leaving the flights in the middle open for a period of time until it becomes clear how those parts of the trip will unfold, represents a near optimal strategy for the traveler.