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Share, Share Alike: Cut Costs and Meet Fellow Travelers with Shared Tours for Rick Steves Readers

Every young child knows that it’s nice to share. But grown-up travelers find it fun, cost-effective, and educational, too.

One of my favorite travel splurges is hiring a local guide to show me their hometown. I find that a private guide helps me make the most of my time while enhancing my appreciation of a place. I recommend the best of these guides in my books. But I realize that not everybody can afford to hire their own guide for the day.

That’s why, a few years ago, I had the brainstorm to work with great guides to assemble “shared tours” for groups of my readers — letting good travelers split the cost of a great tour, and giving a great guide more work.

Volterra guides.jpg

The first place I tried this was in Sevilla, Spain, where Concepción Delgao and I worked together to come up with the perfect two-hour walking tour. For the last several years, Rick Steves readers have been happy to show up each morning at 10:30 (except Sundays…Concepción’s day off) and chip €15 apiece into the communal hat in exchange for a top-notch tour. Thousands of my readers have taken advantage of this…and Concepción couldn’t be happier.

Later, I teamed up with Annie Adair — an American expat married to an Italian — in the Tuscan hill town of Volterra. We created a similar tour that lets Annie and her colleague Claudia show off the best one-hour walk of Volterra for just €10 a head (meets Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings at 6:00 p.m., and Wednesday mornings at 12:30).When I was in Volterra last summer, I just had to check out how the tour was working. I met up with Claudia, as we explain in our book. It was a slow night, so we waited to see if the required-minimum three Rick Steves travelers would show up. Sure enough, at the stroke of 6, a family arrived for the tour…and we all enjoyed a great guided walk together.

Vincenzo, an ambitious entrepreneur based in Naples, runs Mondo Guide. I have long regretted that Naples, Pompeii, and the Amalfi Coast — three of Southern Italy’s best experiences — were so challenging to see on your own, but so expensive to do with a private guide. Vincenzo and I hatched a plan to offer shared tours, tailored for my readers, for these three itineraries. Vincenzo designed a website to make signing up easy, and for the last two years, thousands of my readers have had a better (and more cost-effective) experience in this part of Italy. New for 2016, Mondo has added two more shared tours for my readers: A private boat trip from Sorrento to the Isle of Capri (a romantic and efficient alternative to the crowded public ferries); and thoughtfully designed shore excursions for cruise passengers arriving in Naples and Salerno.

In each of these cases, shared tours are a win-win-win. My readers are happy because they get to split the cost of a talented local guide’s personal attention. The guides are happy because they get more business (and, they tell me, they find my readers great to work with). And I’m happy because everyone else is happy.

Helping travelers maximize their experience in Europe, while minimizing the cost, is our mission. Shared tours like these are just one of many ways we enjoy our work at Rick Steves’ Europe. Happy travels!

Comments

21 Replies to “Share, Share Alike: Cut Costs and Meet Fellow Travelers with Shared Tours for Rick Steves Readers”

    1. Hi Alice, this is Evelynn in Rick’s office. No similar setup in Milan at this time, but you can find recommended local guides and tour companies in our guidebooks. Feel free to contact our team of Travel Advisors with questions or for recommendations at rick@ricksteves.com.

  2. Love this idea Rick. We’re going to Poland on Sunday. Anything like this in Gdansk, Warsaw, or Kraków?

    1. Hi Doug, this is Evelynn in Rick’s office. No similar setup in Poland at this time, but you can find recommended local guides and tour companies in our guidebooks. Feel free to contact our team of Travel Advisors with questions or for recommendations at rick@ricksteves.com.

  3. We took Concepción Delgao’s walking tour in Seville a couple years ago, and it was absolutely fantastic. We took her up on her offer to guide us through the cathedral a few years ago, and by visiting with her we were able to skip the extremely long line.

  4. Hello… Great idea!

    We’re going to Greece in August. How can we look more into this?

    Thanks!

    1. Hi Jonny, this is Evelynn in Rick’s office. Though we don’t have a similar setup in Greece at this time, any information about recommended local guides and tour companies can be found in our guidebooks. Feel free to contact our team of Travel Advisors with questions at rick@ricksteves.com.

  5. We took the shard tours with Mondo for the Amalifi coast from Sorrento last year. This was by far the best tour for the money and a fantastic way to see more of the Amalfi Coast in a few days than you would ever see on your own.
    Thank you so very much for creating these wonderful tours! The prices are wonderful, the tour guides fantastic, and the memories are life long!!

    Molte Bene Steve!!

  6. Annie’s tour in Volterra is wonderful. She can feel her passion and love for her village and its rich Etruscan history.

  7. Do you have tours in Ireland? Planning to go there end of August-beginning of September. Thank you.

    1. Hi Fran, this is Evelynn in Rick’s office. No similar shared tours set up in Ireland, but you can find recommended local guides and tour companies in our Ireland guidebook. Feel free to contact our Travel Advisors for any suggestions or with questions at rick@ricksteves.com

  8. Do you recommend local guides for shared tours in any of these cities? Venice, Varenna, Monterosso, Florence, Assisi, Rome
    I’m going on the My Way Italy tour on May 8, and I would like to arrange a shared tour in some of these cities.

    1. Hi Michelle, this is Evelynn in Rick’s office. No shared tours set up in these cities, but recommended local guides and companies can be found in our guidebooks. You could see if the local guides would be willing to guide you and other members of your My Way tour at the same time. Feel free to contact our Travel Advisors with any questions at rick@ricksteves.com.

  9. I took the tour with one of Concepcion’s younger guides, and it was good, but not the best — part of that because the other tourists were not Rickniks. She was able to refer me to a guide company in Toledo that gave a very good night walk there, full of gossip and behind-the-scenes access to excavations.

    1. Hi Ruth Ann, this is Evelynn in Rick’s office. No shared tours set up in Paris or Rome, but recommended local guides and companies can be found in our guidebooks. Feel free to contact our Travel Advisors with any questions at rick@ricksteves.com.

  13. We just signed up for the Mondo Tour to Capri from Sorrento in April. We will be there on the Rick Steves’ South Italy tour and thought this would be a great tour to take on our day off in Sorrento. We also talked six friends who will be in Sorrento at the same time (but not on the RS South Italy tour-too bad for them) to join us on the Mondo tour.

    Thank you to Rick and to Mondo tours for making it possible.

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