I spend about a third of each year in Europe. And every year, a highlight is actually taking a Rick Steves tour. This year, my pick was the Heart of Portugal in 12 Days — and I had a blast.
For our tour company, Rick Steves’ Europe Tours, 2018 has been the best year yet — with 28,000 travelers (and counting) joining us on over 1,000 departures. As the head of the company, I believe it’s essential to actually experience our tours as a participant. It helps me get to know our tours and our customers: Who’s joining us? What are their expectations, energy levels, attention spans, and highlights? And all of this helps me answer the key question: How can we be better?
My goal as a tour operator is to provide maximum efficiency, maximum experience, and maximum value. Travel can be filled with anxiety, and something I’m really committed to for our travelers is minimum anxiety.
On my Portugal tour this year, all but a couple of my fellow tour members were repeat travelers. In fact, I’d estimate that the people in our group had taken an average of four Rick Steves tours each. (Being a less “mainstream” destination, Portugal tends to draw more experienced travelers.)
During our peak tour times in spring and fall, we have over 100 guides (like Fatima, shown below) all working at the same time. Our travelers come on our tours with very high expectations — and our guides enjoy the professional challenge of exceeding those expectations.
Guides tell me that one of the reasons they like leading Rick Steves’ Europe Tours is the high caliber of the people who join us. And they also like that we pay our guides entirely up front. That’s a huge difference between us and other tour companies, many of whom employ guides only if they generate a lot of secondary income. Many non-Rick Steves tour operators pay their guides only a nominal wage; the guide is expected to earn the rest of their income through tips, shopping kickbacks, and commissions on optional sightseeing tours that they “upsell” to their tour members. But we operate differently — we’ve made all our money up front, and our guides are fully paid from the start. This frees them up to be a friend and teacher to our groups, and to see our customers as travel partners rather than a source of income. It works better both for guides and for tour members — and, I believe, is simply better from a quality point of view.
On our Portugal tour, I loved the way our guide, Fatima, packed each day with experiences. We give each guide a discretionary budget to use on creative extras that will enhance the tour. And Fatima used it to both educate and treat our group. For example, on our Lisbon walk, she bought us all lottery tickets, showed us how they worked, and explained how the lottery helps fund programs for the blind. (And a few of us even won a handful of euros — so the lesson continued as we cashed in our winning tickets.) Another particularly tasty delight: Fatima surprised us with boxes of the best cream tarts in Portugal, still warm from the oven.
And at Belém’s Monument to the Discoveries, Fatima turned our group shot into a teaching moment, as we lined up like the sailors, conquistadors, explorer-priests, and scientists that powered Portugal into world leadership 500 years ago. I got to be Prince Henry the Navigator.
I always come home from a Rick Steves tour inspired by our guides and our tour members. Any suggestions for next year’s tour?