As is tradition at each of our tour guide summits, last weekend I invited our guides into my home for a party. As is also our tradition, the guides — representing about 20 countries — had a chance to show off their culture in a boisterous “talent” show. Over the next few days, I’ll post some of the show’s hilarious highlights here.
For our first installment, let’s go to Spain. Here’s a quick snippet of guide Federico Barroso García singing “Bésame Mucho” in such a passionate way that our other Spanish guides could simply not contain themselves. Federico was lovingly mobbed by his fellow Spain guides.
If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.
When my tour guides fly to my hometown of Edmonds for a week of working together, I enjoy taking them out to a local bar. Twenty years ago, we’d all fit in one booth. Today, with close to 100 guides, we take over an entire tavern. In this video, I’m welcoming our tour-guiding gang to A Very Taki Tiki Bar & Grill for a night of fun before a day of meetings. Cheers, santé, salud, prost, and skål!
My pride and passion is sharing the energy and talents of these guides with our tour members each year. Tomorrow — Saturday, January 18 — with our voices still a little hoarse, join our guides and me online from 9 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. PST for the live streaming of Test Drive a Tour Guide — eight free, one-hour slideshows on Europe’s top tour destinations for 2014. Happy Travels!
If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.
The Rick Steves 2014 annual Tour Guide Summit is well under way. In the past four days, our guides have endured 10 hours of my lectures and workshops on how to lead a tour in the Rick Steves way. As was stressed all along, “Each of you is an excellent guide with your own style. We want to keep that and mesh it with what our travelers expect when they sign up on a Rick Steves tour. Because our travelers have high and unique expectations and we aim to exceed them with every trip.”
Thirty years ago only one guide led a Rick Steves tour. His name was Rick Steves.In 2014, well over a hundred guides lead Rick Steves tours (and each guides in his or her region far better than Rick could). These are the guides who make up the 2014 Rick Steves’ Europe Tour Guide Summit (many of them in the USA for the first time.)A highlight in my social calendar is inviting 140 guides from nearly every country in Europe into my home for a multicultural festival and celebration. We love our work (and my ears are still ringing from all the boisterous fun we had last night).
Tomorrow (Saturday), January 18, with voices still a little hoarse, join me and our guides online from 9 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. PST for the live streaming of Test Drive a Tour Guide — eight free one-hour slideshows on Europe’s top tour destinations for 2014. Happy travels!
We are really into maximizing the experiences of our tour members on Rick Steves tours. Today we’re meeting with all of our guides to brainstorm ways we can give our travelers the most vivid memories as souvenirs to take home. Of course, a good guide helps travelers get out of their comfort zones and into new edible experiences, too. We took a moment to share with our guides this video collection of tasty bits of Europe. Warning: Don’t view this on an empty stomach! But do watch it with a determination to enjoy the taste treats of Europe on your next trip. Bon appétit!
P.S. This Saturday, January 18, 9am P.S.T., join me and my tour guides online for the live streaming of Test Drive a Tour Guide — eight free, one-hour slideshows on Europe’s top tour destinations for 2014. Tune in and learn more!
If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.
We’re hosting over 100 guides this week. They flew from all over Europe to Edmonds (just north of Seattle). While they may be aces, with all the tour-guiding experience in the world, we’re dedicating this week to making sure they know what our travelers expect and what distinguishes a Rick Steves tour.
You can be a French foodie, and Italian art historian, a Spanish dancer who fights bulls on the weekend, or the top Blue Badge guide in all of England. But if you don’t know the Name Game, you’re not a Rick Steves guide. On our tours, we want everyone to know everyone else’s name — so our groups do this little memory aid exercise. And this morning, I met with 25 of our newest guides to actually do the Name Game together.
Still fuzzy with jetlag, we gathered in a circle and went systematically around (as the Name Game entails) until everyone knew everyone’s name.
Here’s a fun little video clip of Liz Lister (from Scotland), who happened to stand in the unlucky spot in the circle — immediately to my right. When it was finally her turn, she needed to go through the entire group. And Liz (who was my guide when I joined our Best of Scotland tour this summer) nailed it. After this, we reshuffled so everyone was in a different spot, and the guides showed off their memory by getting all the names right again.
We hope you’ll be playing the Name Game with your small group and great guide sometime in 2014: perhaps in Vienna, maybe Lisbon, possibly Dublin, or how about Amsterdam? Wherever you end up traveling, when it’s on a Rick Steves tour, it’s with a great group of people… and they’ll all know your name.
P.S. I don’t want to keep the guides to myself. On Saturday, January 18 at 9 am P.S.T, join me and my tour guides online for the live streaming of Test Drive a Tour Guide — eight free, one-hour slideshows on Europe’s top tour destinations for 2014. Tune in and learn more!
If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.
