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One quibble:

> "no point giving commission to a travel-agent when you can plan it yourself."

Travel agents often purchase in bulk and can get discounts that you can't get via 'do it yourself' flight tools. I recently travelled to Vancouver and Helsinki from New Zealand (effectively a round-world ticket) that worked out about $NZ 700 cheaper via an agent than online.

Good agents are also adept at 'working the system' - ie, knowing when and where cheap flights are available, upcoming deals, etc. It would pay to check whether your agent can do a better deal before booking online.

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Further more, in some countries a local broker may get you a far better deal than you would ever get online. It is just that online tools penetration is not quite there for the smaller tour/lodge/travel operators in 3rd world countries.

One example:From Lima to Cuzco (on your way to Machu Pichu) Flight via regular airline ~$300. Overnight bus on a 1st class seat/bed (Very comfy!) ~$30! (You sleep most of the way, so you save 1 night hotel and adjust to the high altitude while on the road)

From what I have heard, that bus ride is pretty hairy. Not sure if this was in first class or not but a friend who recently went there opted for the flight. Then again he was only there for a few weeks and time was probably a bigger factor than budget.

One in-between option is to front $25-50 and ask FlightFox (http://flightfox.com/) users to come up with an itinerary. They can't access bulk deals or anything of that sort, but they tend to be pretty good at the "working the system" angle imo, finding public but obscure booking options that I probably wouldn't have found.

I believe some of the FlightFox users are travel agents, so they probably can take advantage of special deals.

Travel agents don't always have the best options. I traveled on 5 continents this year, taking 30 flights total. My total cost of flights was also about 7k, compared to the author's same cost for half the flights. I booked everything separately, using Kayak, Hipmunk, and local airline offices in Nepal, Fiji, and Jordan. If you research travel hacking and follow those tips, you can find great deals.

The main bonus for me was the freedom to fly where I chose, rather than where the airline offering the RTW ticket.

No, but its important not to rule it out entirely, which is attitude I used to have, which I have since changed. Agents often allow full flexibility by cancelling flights and crediting them to a new flight, allowing a lot more freedom than the independent route. I know I saved a lot of money and was able to double my time in South America purely because I booked through an agent. It costs an extra $100 USD at the time but I changed the flights 4 separate times to extend dates, change destinations.. well worth it in that regard

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