A Quick Trip to Iran

I’m well into the final stages of producing our upcoming “Holy Land: Israelis and Palestinians Today” special for public television. Doing this work, I’m struck by the value of actually meeting people in faraway lands.

Recently, a friend shared this photo essay from Iran with me. These photos (by Brandon Stanton, of Humans of New York fame) bring back memories of wonderful moments from my travels to Iran. Check it out. And as you look at these people, imagine them on your street, in your place of work, dating your children, sharing a retirement home with your parents. It’s a wonderfully small world and, as far as I can tell, people are generally good… motived by fear and love.

 

Traveling the USA — and Enjoying In-Depth Interviews with the Local Media

While I’ve never tallied it up, I imagine I spend 30 or 40 days a year traveling throughout the USA, visiting public television stations and giving lectures. When I’m in town to give a talk or host a pledge drive, I often sit down with the local affairs show host for an interview. I think the best interviewer I’ve encountered was Dick Pryor last year at OETA in Oklahoma City. Here’s that interview on OETA’s local affairs program, On The Record.

If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.

More Questions for Those of You Who Have Traveled Recently with My Guidebooks

POMisc_150We just finished our annual guidebook review, as we plan our 2014 research (for the 2015 editions). The basic skills of travel are evolving, with the on-the-road technology available to all of us these days, in the form of smartphones, tablets, and widespread Wi-Fi.  As we continue to update our many guidebooks, we have a few general questions:

  1. Do you find it helpful to have listings for Internet cafés (with actual terminals, not just Wi-Fi)?
  2. How are you finding hotels these days? My guidebook’s listings, websites (like TripAdvisor), calling ahead as you travel, local tourist offices and room-booking services, etc.? Our hunch is that people don’t use guidebook hotel listings while on the road as much as they used to.
  3. Is there any type of information we are missing in our guidebooks?
  4. Is there any type of information in our guidebooks that you do NOT use and would consider a waste of pages?

Thanks for your help.

Help! Traveled Recently with My Guidebooks? I Have Questions for You.

NS-TF11Cruise_113I’ve just huddled for three days with my lead editors and co-authors to review our entire series of guidebooks. We consider this a “wellness check”: While we assume that our books are in good shape (and are reassured by our ever-increasing sales), we want to be certain they are all living up to their full potential.

As I travel, I enjoy bumping into people using my books, who allow me to anecdotally get a sense of how they are using our material. But we have no way of knowing for sure which chapters and which sections in each book get the most use. And throughout our “book summit,” we often wondered, “What would our readers say about this?”

We’re hoping you can be our guinea pigs. Here’s a list of some of the questions we wish we had a crystal ball to help us answer. Let us know your take on any of these topics:

  1. In our Spain book, has anybody used our chapter on Cantabria (the northern coastal region featuring the Altamira Cave, the towns of Comillas and Santillana, and the Picos de Europa mountains)? If no one hollers, this chapter is toast.
  2. Has anyone used our coverage of Sitges, the beach resort near Barcelona? Speak now or say “Adéu” to Sitges.
  3. In Germany, is anyone still using the Romantic Road bus tour? Or is it more for drivers these days? Back in 1980, this was one of the original “Back Doors” in the first edition of Europe Through the Back Door. But these days, it seems those buses are going empty. Achtung! If no one speaks up, it’s auf Wiedersehen to the Romantische Strasse.
  4. For the German city with the great Gothic cathedral, we’re debating between the German name, Köln, and the English one, Cologne. We call Florence “Florence” rather than “Firenze,” but we call Seville “Sevilla” — so consistency is not our policy. Your preference: Köln or Cologne?
  5. We love the city of Dresden, in Germany, and cover it generously in our guidebook. But it’s hard to gauge how many of our readers are going there. Have you gone? Do you care?
  6. We generously include Salzburg (which is in Austria) in our Germany book. We wonder: Are a lot of our readers in Munich and Bavaria side-tripping in Salzburg, without continuing all the way to Hallstatt or Vienna (which are covered in a separate book)? Unless there’s a huge outcry, we’re going to cut Salzburg out of the Germany guidebook.
  7. Speaking of Salzburg–has anyone taken any of the “Sound of Music” tours there? Did you enjoy them? Are we overrating these in our book?

Thanks in advance for your advice. It’s a big help

A Storm of Images that Show how Great Work Makes Great Travel

Last week, all 90 of us at Rick Steves’ Europe headquarters in Edmonds, Washington, gathered for our annual all-day, all-staff meeting. I kick the day off with a two-hour “state of the company” address. It’s my chance to explain my business philosophy, herald new accomplishments, get everyone in sync, and look to the future.

Then each department head took the floor to get the general assembly up to speed on their department’s own challenges and triumphs.

That evening, we took over the biggest bar in our little town for dinner, drinks, and our staff awards ceremony — celebrating (and roasting) employees hitting milestones (we had about a dozen staff members reaching one, five, ten, fifteen, and twenty-year anniversaries of starting work here).

For me, a highlight was offering the twelve newbies — people attending their first annual meeting — a good look at the many dimensions of the company they now work for. Several, who came to us from bigger companies, were amazed that we dedicated such time sharing financial and marketing numbers and strategies with the rank-and-file staff, and in building a general esprit de corps.

Among several little video clips shared was this montage of photos taken by our staff photographer, Dominic Arizona Bonuccelli (www.azfoto.com). Looking at these amazing images, we are all thankful to be charged with helping our traveling public actually have these vivid experiences themselves. As you enjoy this storm of pictures, (which cover our Eastern Europe, London, and Berlin/Prague/Vienna tours), imagine also yourself right there in 2014. I’ll be with you!

If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.