While travel is my favorite “business activity,” I also own and run a corporation employing 80 people and, occasionally, I need to stay home and work in that capacity.
Each year we have a Management Team Retreat, in which our 17 department heads join me at a fun getaway location outside of Seattle for a day and a half of brainstorming and fine-tuning, reviewing the last year and looking ahead to the next. I just got back from our 2011 retreat, and I’m feeling very good about things at Europe Through the Back Door, Inc. Here’s a review of some of the issues we hashed out:
Our tour program sold 11,845 seats in 2011, our best year ever. Tours are selling at an even better clip for 2012 — and 52 percent of those signed up so far are return travelers. We like those numbers, and we love our alums. The big change in 2012 is smaller tour size — by popular request, we cut the maximum capacity of about half of our tours from 28 people to 24. This unavoidably comes with a commensurate increase in prices, but apparently our travelers recognize the beauty of smaller groups. We shot our new tour promo video in 2011, and this winter, we’ll be editing that footage into a much-improved new video to replace our eight-year-old one (which has served us well). And we’re planning our biggest tour alumni party/tour guide summit ever for January 14 2012.
We are having fun with the Web, widgets, and social networking, and look forward to more in the future. Smart content management and communicating with travelers in groups vs. one-on-one emails is a big paradigm shift for us. The TV section of our website has a new widget that lets people type in their zip code to see when my public television series is playing in their town. Except, perhaps, for our shipping department (which has to do all the work), we all like our new monthly Facebook-only blowout sales (in which we lose money, but have over a thousand people give our shopping cart a whirl).
Our Rick Steves Audio Europe™ app — new in 2011 — has been a big success (with about 80,000 downloads). We are busily working on the 2.0 version, with lots of improvements, and are determined to keep it free for our travelers (even though it’s quite expensive to produce). We’ll be adding lots of exciting new content distilled from our radio program in the coming months, and I hope to produce new audio tours to Vienna and the Rhine River in 2012.
For 2011, our new Rick Steves’ Mediterranean Cruise Ports guidebook and our three new Pocket Guides (to Rome, Paris, and London) are all selling well from the start. Our publisher assured us that making a small, punchy, and colorful pocket version of our full-blown city guidebooks would not cannibalize sales of that book, but tap into a big market we were missing (and other publishers already doing “Top Ten”-type guidebooks were enjoying a free pass). Sales figures confirm his wisdom. The Mediterranean Cruise Ports guide is doing so well, we have a Northern European version in the cooker.
I reiterated my commitment to the notion that “content is king.” We’ll let others worry about the endless ways to redesign and amplify, and we’ll focus on generating the best travel content (written, audio, and video) in the business. Our electronic books are dominant; on iTunes, 8 of the top 10 bestselling Europe guides, and 16 of the top 20, are ours. Still, our electronic revenue amounts to only about 10 percent of our print revenue. In the world of guidebooks, print still rules.
I will continue to spend four months a year traveling in Europe, spending two-thirds of the time researching our guidebooks, and a third of the time filming new TV episodes. I’ll be making two big trips in 2012: In April and May, I’ll research in Lisbon, Madrid, Toledo, Barcelona ,Venice, Veneto, and the Cinque Terre, and then film two TV shows. Then, in July and August, I’ll research Vienna, Germany, and the Low Countries, and film three TV shows. I’ll also be traveling to the Cinque Terre to be sure we are doing what we can to help its flood-ravaged villages. In our endeavor to help boost their recovery, we’ll be establishing a hotline-type info service for Cinque Terre-bound travelers (in conjunction with our Italy guidebook) with a monthly update on places to eat and sleep as they open up.
In 2012, I’ll film a new Venice show, a show on the Veneto, and three new “how to travel” episodes. These will replace the ten-year-old trio we have out now — lots has changed (I hear they even have a common currency now). Other TV specials for 2012 include a two-hour pledge special called Hidden Europe featuring a dozen gorgeous, underappreciated, and offbeat destinations (due out in March of 2012); our one-hour special Europe: A Symphonic Journey (just filmed last month and due out in September of 2012); and a one-hour prime time special on Rome (October of 2012). The premiere of our Rome special will coincide with the release of our new, 15-episode seventh series.
I made it clear to the staff that, as a co-sponsor of I-502 (a bill that I believe will make Washington State the first in our nation to legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana in the 2012 elections — see www.newapproachwa.org), I will be dedicating a lot of energy to that project. (In a few days, I’ll be posting a report from a related convention I recently attended.)
People asked about my retirement plans. I can’t imagine that. We’re having too much fun and this work is too gratifying to think of slowing down in the foreseeable future.
P.S. While the cats are away, the mice will play. Every year when the managers go on our retreat, our staff cooks up some clever mischief. With a spirit of “Occupy Wall Street” rebellion in the air, we were a little concerned what this year would bring. On Friday, I’ll fill you in on what they came up with…
Busy schedule. But you did not mention if you were going to do any more of your video lecture series podcasts. I especially liked “travel as a political act.
Here are a few things I’d love to see: a sequel to your European Christmas show with more cultures featured; more shows about Eastern Europe and a show about Russia (a country that embraces both Europe and Asia); and perhaps venture beyond Europe and do something on Australia and New Zealand.
Regarding all your work for Marijuana, if you have some time go on to The Grass Valley Union Newspaper in Grass Valley, Ca. I think you would find some interest on the issues that we now have in this small county. We are now considered the 2cd “Emarald Triangle”, and many people here feel that this is our “Cash crop” and that our county could not stay afloat without it. We are having great difficulties with grows now occuring in neighborhoods and around elementary school. If you do a little research on what has happened over the last month I think you would find it interesting in your legalization for Washington. Don’t really know what California has done wrong in comparison.
Seventeen department heads? And you employ 80 people!! Well, I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If it works for you, do it. And roughly twenty percent of the people with income in the US can afford your tours. That’s a ton of people so that’s great. As for marijuana,
it should be legalized because it would help put the south- of- the- border cartels out of business. Four months of the year traveling!!? – double up on your health checks for weight, blood sugar, cholesterol plus a couple of others. Are there any other suggestions from the peanut gallery: reward your guides, they are your repeat business’s life’s blood. Just a thought.
bill from South Carolina, USA
Rick, my significant other and I would love to see a dedicated guidebook for Scotland… any chance of that?
I agree, would love to see a Scotland book.
You Sir/Madam are the enemy of confusion eevyrhwere!
Dear Steve,
My wife, three children and I did the 21 day ETTBD around 1994, renting a van, and using the guide. We told everyone about how terrific it was. Some very close friends then did the same. After that a relative of theirs went, but traveling solo, went with a tour guide. The ETTBD guide was a Professor of European History. They exchanged addresses, and what do you know, have now been married for many years! I wonder if that has ever happened before!
Larry