Get an open-jaw ticket to travel more for less

Say you have a Schengen visa and want to go to Paris and Milan. But travelling from New Delhi, you are worried about booking two expensive one-way tickets – one from New Delhi to Paris and the return from Milan to New Delhi. Don’t worry. Just click on the multi-city option in one of the travel portals and consider an open-jaw ticket.

An open-jaw ticket is a round trip ticket where the flier does not depart from the city where she first arrived. For instance, a traveller might fly into Paris from India but will leave from Milan or Berlin. This way, if you take a train between Paris and Milan or to Berlin, you get to see two cities, as opposed to just seeing either. Or perhaps, fly into Bangkok from India, travel around Thailand and choose to book a return flight to India from Phuket, and not Bangkok.

If you draw this itinerary on a paper, it will look like an open-jaw, thus the name. And the best part is that an open-jaw ticket, most often, is cheaper than a regular return ticket.

To illustrate, we checked the ticket costs of the New Delhi-Paris and Milan-New Delhi flights. If you depart on November 2 from New Delhi for Paris, a one-way economy ticket will cost you ₹20,957 on Air India. And a return to New Delhi from Milan on November 17 on a one-way ticket will shave off ₹24,556 from your account. The itinerary will cost you ₹45,513. Now if you book an open-jaw ticket for the same dates, by clicking on the multi-city option, the itinerary will cost you ₹41,278.

“You can collect the same number of miles in an open-jaw ticket as a standard ticket that arrives and leaves from the same airport. Having said that, such tickets are most apt for seasoned travellers, keen on travelling to more than one place, either via renting cars and driving between cities; equally so for people voyaging multi-destinations on cruises,” says Indiver Rastogi, Chief Operating Officer and Head - Corporate Travel, Thomas Cook (India) Ltd.

“Open-jaw tickets offer significant value as they turns out to be economically viable; also not to forget, it ends up saving lot of time overcoming the challenge of layovers or transfer.

However, the only drawback is that open-jaw cities must usually fall in the same region,” adds Rastogi.

There are other disadvantages too. Price of the tickets may look tempting but one must consider the additional cost of travel and stays in other cities. But this hasn’t diminished the variant's popularity.

“Most business travellers are increasingly beginning to prefer open-jaw tickets; we have seen an increase of over 22 per cent year-on-year.

Likewise, we have seen a spur of around 12-15 per cent in leisure travellers opting for open-jaw tickets,” says Rastogi.

So, run along, be adventurous, book that open-jaw ticket, and get more out of your travels for less.

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