Multi-city vs. round-trip ticket

When you reserve your airfare, you have a couple choices: round-trip or multi-city (also called open-jawed). Each has its benefits.

A round-trip ticket is the simplest and often the least expensive. You fly from Toronto to Berlin, for example, and then from Berlin back to Toronto.

A multi-city ticket often costs more but saves you time. You fly from Toronto to Berlin, but instead of returning to Toronto from Berlin, you return from Vienna. This is the option you should consider if you're going to more than one destination, which I highly recommend.

Depending on where you're traveling, a multi-city ticket saves you time, while a round-trip ticket saves you money.

Check the airfare both ways -- multi-city and round-trip (including transportation to get back to your departing point, if applicable) -- and choose the one that works best for you. If multi-city is only slightly more, it gives you almost a full extra day to explore, because you're spending less time going to airports, waiting to board, traveling from the airport into the city and so on. You might even get a pleasant surprise by finding out that your multi-city ticket costs less than round-trip, as we did with Toronto-Rome vs. Toronto-Rome-Naples-Rome airfare.

If multi-city is substantially more, which is more typical, it may be worthwhile to pick the round-trip airfare and travel to your original arrival point. Check the transportation costs for this, though! Although affordable train travel and domestic (Europe) flights often make transportation faster, it might push the cost of a round-trip fare past the cost difference of a multi-city ticket.

We've traveled both ways, and each way has its benefits.

There is something comfortable about round-trip airfare: returning to your starting point after spending time in other places. It can also be stressful if, for example, you're taking a morning train from Florence to Rome, and you're depending on that train being on time for your flight out of Rome.

By contrast, multi-city tickets offer you almost another full day to explore. This is helpful if you're on a tight schedule or you just can't get enough of this new place. It also offers some "wiggle room" if bad weather changes your plans halfway through the trip (which is almost guaranteed to happen, by the way).