What a Round the World Private Jet Trip Actually Costs

I am always asking other people about their dream trips. This week I am going to tell you about mine, and then take it apart so you can see exactly what is in it.

Before you ask why I am a travel advisor if I can afford a trip like this: I can't. We are dreaming here. I had no idea private jet expeditions like this existed before I became an advisor, and when I found this one I could not stop reading about it.

A few of you may actually be in a position to take it. If that is you, the whole point of this post is that you should know what the money buys before anyone tries to sell it to you.

What a private jet expedition actually is

It is not a charter and it is not a cruise. You buy a seat on a scheduled departure, the same way you would buy a cabin on a small ship, and the aircraft belongs to the trip for the whole journey.

The operator here is TCS World Travel, who have been running private jet expeditions for thirty five years and who also fly the Four Seasons jet. Their flagship is called Around the World in 25 Days, and it is the one I would take over anything else on earth.

Fifty two guests on an Airbus A321 operated by Titan Airways, in handcrafted Italian leather flatbed seats with six and a half feet of space each. There is an onboard chef, a doctor, a photographer, two subject experts and an expedition team of around twenty in total.

The route: ten destinations in twenty five days

The 2027 departure runs 12 February to 8 March, out of Washington, D.C. and home to Washington, D.C.

Cusco and Machu Picchu, or Pisco, in Peru. Easter Island, Chile. Papeete, Tahiti. The Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Angkor Wat, Cambodia. Jaipur and the Taj Mahal, India. The Serengeti Plain or the Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania. Luxor, Egypt. Cairo, Egypt. Marrakech, Morocco.

That is nine UNESCO World Heritage sites and one of the seven natural wonders of the world, in under a month, without a single connection.

How much does a round the world private jet trip cost?

The February 2027 departure is US$175,000 per person, based on double occupancy. Travelling on your own adds a supplement of US$17,500, which is ten percent.

That solo figure is worth pausing on. At this end of the market a single supplement is often a third of the fare. TCS carries a lot of solo travellers and prices accordingly, which makes this one of the more reasonable bucket list trips for someone travelling alone.

What is included, and what is not

Included: all accommodation, all food, all beverages, every experience in every destination, every ground transfer, all gratuities and all taxes. Somebody also hands you local currency when you land somewhere new, usually ten or fifteen dollars, so you are not queuing at a bureau de change on your first morning in Marrakech.

Not included: your flights to and from the start and end cities, travel insurance, and anything genuinely personal.

On the ground it runs eight to ten people per vehicle. When people hear the phrase group travel they picture a coach with forty seats on it. This is a Sprinter or an SUV, and it is a completely different experience.

The eighty hours nobody talks about

I asked TCS what the single strongest argument for the trip is, fully expecting them to say the jet. They did not. They said the arithmetic.

Assembled commercially, that same itinerary takes roughly thirty six days rather than twenty five, and around eighty hours of your life is spent inside airports. On this version you do not carry a bag and you do not stand in a line, because the expedition team handles luggage and airport formalities at every stop.

Golf Around the World by private jet

The same operator flies a golf version on behalf of Kalos Golf, and it is the most interesting thing I found all month. Twenty days, 28 May to 16 June 2027. Seven destinations, eleven courses, fifty two guests. Seattle, Tokyo, Chiang Mai, Kathmandu, Almaty, Stockholm, Copenhagen, out through Washington, D.C.

Two of the courses will stop any serious golfer.

The West Course at Yokohama Country Club was renovated by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw in 2015, which is close to unheard of in Japan, and since 2025 it has hosted the PGA Tour's Baycurrent Classic. You play it in June. The Tour arrives in October.

Gokarna Forest in Kathmandu is the one I keep telling people about. It opened in 1999 on 470 acres that were, until fairly recently, the Nepali royal family's private hunting estate. It was designed by David McLay Kidd, in the same year he finished Bandon Dunes. Same architect, same year. One course changed American golf and the other is one of only two eighteen hole courses in the entire country of Nepal. Spotted deer graze the fairways at dusk and monkeys come out onto the greens.

And here is the detail worth knowing even if you have never held a club. The person travelling with the golfer, who does not play, pays US$159,000 instead of US$166,000 and tours instead. Seven thousand dollars is the whole difference. Temples and a cooking class in Chiang Mai, Boudhanath and Bhaktapur in Kathmandu, Drottningholm and the Vasa in Stockholm, the canals in Copenhagen.

Most golf trips are sold on the quiet assumption that the other person will make do. This one is built for them, and that is usually the difference between a trip somebody talks about and a trip somebody takes.

Can you bring your grandchildren?

Yes, and this is the part of the research that surprised me most.

The minimum age on these private jet expeditions is twelve. A few months ago I wrote about skip generation travel, where grandparents take the grandchildren and leave the parents at home, and I assumed it was a niche idea I happened to like.

It is not. Visa published research this year showing that 28% of grandparents have already taken a trip with their grandchildren and no parents along, and another 35% intend to within three years. Two thirds of that generation say they would rather enjoy their money while they are alive, or watch their heirs enjoy it, than leave all of it behind.

That is not a trend piece. That is payments data, and it describes exactly the person for whom a trip like this makes sense.

Do you need a travel advisor if the price is published?

I asked TCS this directly, because I would rather know the answer than not. If the trip is this inclusive and the rates are published, what is an advisor actually for?

Her answer was that guests ask her the same thing every week. Visas and entry requirements for ten countries in twenty five days. The decisions inside the itinerary that nobody warns you are decisions, like Machu Picchu or Pisco, or the Serengeti Plain or the Ngorongoro Crater, which are not equivalent choices and which you make once. And everything on either side of the trip, which the operator does not touch.

I would add one thing she was too polite to say. On a trip that costs what a house deposit costs, the useful person in the room is the one who has read the entire brochure twice and has no reason at all to tell you it is perfect.

It also costs you nothing. The rates are the same whether you book direct or through me, because the operator pays the advisor rather than the traveller.

The takeaway

Fifty two seats, once a year, and the price has gone one direction every year I can find a record of.

If this is your trip, the honest next step is a conversation rather than a brochure. If it is not, that is completely fine, because it is not mine either. The reason I write Dream With Me Monday is that naming the thing out loud is how it stops being abstract, and a surprising number of people find out that their actual dream costs a great deal less than they assumed.