For over 20 years now, my guides and I have had an exciting review process where we fine-tune our tour itineraries. For me, it’s an important and exciting process because itinerary innovations and improvements can be multiplied by literally thousands of trip experiences.
Originally, when we were tiny, it was a “mind meld” where my few guides and I would connect in a bar or café somewhere in Europe for a brainstorming pow-wow. Now the process is much more involved and takes place here in Edmonds.
Our itinerary review has three stages: First, I meet with my tour operations staff. Steve Smith coordinates all our seventy-some guides. Michelle Kono directs our tour operations department. Michelle divides the tour operations responsibilities for each of our 35 itineraries among her staff. Each person is responsible for arranging and reserving all tour activities for the various tours they are assigned. They know these routes intimately and personally. For each separate itinerary, we review each day’s plan and I weigh in with changes I’d like in an ideal world. We debate these and come up with a consensus as to what our vision is.
For the second stage of the process, we factor in our guides’ experience and advice. We fly our guides to Seattle from all over Europe for our annual itinerary planning summit — a series of round-table discussions covering each itinerary we offer. Michelle’s staff oversees the itinerary sessions as all the guides share their experiences, discoveries, and lessons from mistakes from last year’s guiding. They give my pie-in-the-sky wishes a hard reality check (factoring in drive times, legal limits on how long bus drivers can work, endurance levels and interest levels and comfort levels of their tour members, and their experience with these activities). I am intentionally not in these meetings so the guides are comfortable lambasting my ideas when necessary. They accept, reject, or modify my proposals and come up with proposals of their own. Michelle’s staff distills all decisions into a summary document.
After the guides fly home, we have the final stage of the process. Michelle and her appropriate staff person follow up with me — reviewing the synthesis that came out of the first two stages. We then finalize the changes for the coming year’s tour program.
Yesterday we finished up this collaboration. I am impressed and even humbled by the expertise and commitment to quality our guides exhibited in this process. They beat up a lot of my proposals, improved others, and came up with great suggestions of their own. And I am thrilled with the improvements we’ve reached consensus on.
Our main theme through this process: Wring maximum experience out of every mile, minute, and dollar for our travelers in 2010. In challenging economic times, our guides know they need to work harder than ever. And we need to exceed higher expectations than ever.
For 2010, we are determined to enrich the tour experience we offer. We will promise more in our promotional materials and tout the extras we offer more aggressively in our marketing. When we have a bus reserved to transfer a group from a boat or train to the hotel, we’ll use it for a two-hour city orientation tour. When we hire a local guide for a two-hour museum tour, it’ll be a particular guide…not just any local guide. And we’ll keep that guide for a one-hour city walk after the museum. We’ll nurture relations with local experts who enjoy giving our groups their personal insights into their cultures in casual happy hour/reflections times. We’ll trade any redundancy for itinerary variety. We’ll abandon the bus when the train will save two hours of time in transit. We won’t baby the group if a particular activity may be out of some tour members’ comfort zones. (We’ll do the visits to the local baths, the coffeeshops, the concentration camp, or the force-feeding of the geese — offering those who just don’t want that experience a comfortable alternative.) We’ll be sure those on our tours will never be stuck in lines that Americans on other bus tours think just go with the territory. If there’s an option that only half the group will likely have energy for after dinner, we’ll commit our guide to organize the experience and escort it, even if it’s not included in the actual tour.
I’ll share some of the specific itinerary changes next.
No wonder your tours are so popular! I doubt other tour companies are this rigorous in reviewing and improving their itineraries. Thanks for all the hard work you and your excellent staff do.
Hopefully guides retain or even expand the latitude they have to make on-the-spot decisions based on circumstances. If you have picked the right guides, they will make changes based on common sense and practical experience.
I’m sure your guides appreciate having real input. It will make their jobs easier and more enjoyable.
Rick, what an interesting insight into the process behind your tours! I didn’t realize it was quite this involved. I definitely appreciate all the hard work that you, your staff and Guides put into the tours. I’ll be one of those who will be enjoying the “maximum experience out of every mile, minute, and dollar” in 2010.
And this is why my husband and I are scheduled for our fourth RS tour this summer! Can’t wait…
Hi Rick, I wish to take one of your tours (they all sound so terrific )someday,may be after I retire ( wow, a long way to go ). Right now, with the economy being so down, got to save up for one kid in college now, and the other one in a few years. Keep praying for bright future for America!
When you read a comment by someone like Siew-Keng, it is very revealing. People are aspirational. They recognize the facts of life. They are hopeful. They recognize talent (like RS blogs). Hope RS and staff keep filling the cornucopia because the next generation may not have the resources of his current customer base.
I really think people will get their monies worth from your tours. Better than any I have seen. When we can’t do it ourselves we will start the tours. I do worry that my grown children will not have this luxury. After listening to this morning Sunday news shows, I don’t think they will have a retirement or medical insurance when they are ready to retire. They will probably have to work until they are too ill to. It seems like we are making it a sin to retire and live a comfortable life after people have worked all their lives.
Having taken a RS tour I was impressed with how your organization runs it, so your plans to make it even better are inspiring. I have 2 suggestions I’d like to pass on. First, even though guide books are mailed well in advance of the tour, my experience was that many if not most people on the tour did not read thru them at all prior to the trip and instead thumbed thru them on the bus. Since human nature is unlikely to change, why not acknowledge this and use the bus time to make the tour even more valuable to your clients? What I have in mind is using the TVs mounted throughout the comfy Heidebloem bus and have some videos that can be shown. Not just episodes from your show, but narratives about the upcoming city. These could follow the guidebook but add in pictures and video to make the tour experience more rewarding. The second suggestion may be harder to do since it works at cross purposes to some extent with your guidebooks, but I really think you should make sure people are aware of the great value in terms of experiences per dollar the tour delivers, as good if not better than what most independent travelers can do. It is my belief that 2 days on the tour would take the independent traveler 3 days to duplicate just in terms of activities, and that leaves out the value of the local and tour guides that most independent travelers can’t afford to engage at every stop. Everyone sees the tour price and says “10 days for what? We can spend 10 days in X, Y, and Z for less” but that isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison. The problem is that your publishing business is aimed at convincing travelers they can do it all on their own, so there’s a balancing act involved here.
Insightful comments by Mike and the fact is you can see Europe on your own using RS publications or others – especially if you don’t need to see multiple churches, museums etc. But for certain types of people, RS bus or walking tours fill a need. Judy put her finger on the real issue tho. Touring Europe is very expensive and, notwithstanding Rick’s blandishments about foregoing the needed new car to take tours, highly leveraged boomers, gen x ers and millenials are finally beginning to sweat the economy and their financial futures.
The above blog is why I have toured with ETBD every summer from 2001-2007. I am touring Turkey this coming June. Can’t wait!
If I were to use a tour (or recommend one to others) I’d definitely use Rick Steves’ … but I’d rather just use his guidebooks to travel independently. I couldn’t justify the $250~$300 per day plus airfare when I know that traveling independently I’d be paying half that … and, are Europe’s “back doors” wide enough to drive a tour bus through? I look forward to hearing the specific itinerary changes … it’s exciting to see that someone as successful as Rick doesn’t rest on his laurels, but works hard at delivering the best product possible. More companies & CEOs could learn from that work ethic.
Ok, I know I’m going to get hammered from both sides for asking this question. But I am honestly curious and this by no means an attempt to start something. I know Rick has been rather open about his political beliefs and I am curious if his tours reflect those beliefs or include commentary mirroring it during tours? Thanks for any info that can be provided.
I went on my first RS tour last summer. Before going, I calculated I could do the same tour independently for half the cost of the tour. I decided to use the tour anyway because I have a deaf ear for eastern European lanugages. I was glad I did. I received great value per dollar and hour. What I would not have had on my own: a nicer hotel than I would have booked, more tastes of local food and drink, less time walking in circles and more information regarding history and culture. I will be on another RS tour this summer.
Dear CURIOUS who wrote on 25 Feb at 10 am and asked whether RS ETBD guides mirror Rick Steves’ political message during tours. I can’t speak for all guides of course but mine was Helen Inman in Spain and Portugal and she has already received beaucoup compliments from her past customers so she doesn’t need any help from me even tho I am probably the most demanding person she has encountered. After all, once you subtract her knowledge, patience, energy, personality, ability to communicate, intelligence, resourcefulness and charm, she is just another RS guide. Helen diligently avoided politics during our tour. She focused on the customers and their needs and that enhanced her street cred with everybody on our tour of Spain and Portugal who ranged in age from 20 to 80.