Last week, our little town of Edmonds, Washington, hosted about 2,000 of our 2016 tour alums for our annual Rick Steves Tour Reunion — as well over a hundred of our guides gathered for our guide summit. Along with six huge tour alumni parties, our guides gave 20 talks to full theaters (many of them streamed to thousands of travelers online); we held 30 roundtable workshops brainstorming ways to make each of our tour itineraries more efficient, fun, and experiential; and each night, our guides partied. While this annual event dominates my staff’s time for weeks and costs us hundreds of thousands of dollars, we always bid our guides goodbye at the end of this summit with the strong feeling that it’s all worth it. In 2017, well over 20,000 Americans will join us in Europe, and we’re confident that — thanks largely to these great guides, and our shared commitment to excellence — we’ll offer them the best tours on the market. Here’s a little series of photos that capture a few of the countless wonderful moments that filled this week.
We filled my old junior high school gym with those who enjoyed our tours in 2016 during six successive parties — a perfect chance to share memories and reconnect with tour friends and guides.
I have so much fun meeting with travelers who not only enjoyed their tours last year…but who are “repeat offenders,” coming back for more and more tours. About half the people who traveled with us in 2016 had already traveled with Rick Steves’ Europe Tours. Many have taken a dozen or more.
We give a prize to the group with the best attendance. Having led 900 tours in 2016, that’s a lot of groups. And many had a good little reunion crowd, as tour members traveled from across the USA to share travel memories (and dream of future adventures).
With about a hundred guides taking part in this event, everywhere I looked I saw fun mini-reunions. Here, Sicilian guide Alfio di Mauro reconnects with a couple of happy tour members.
Photo: Kate Mulhern Graham
A fun part of our annual Tour Reunion is the series of 20 “Test Drive a Tour Guide” talks, giving our travelers the chance to learn more about our itineraries and meet some of our guides. As a speaker, I’d throw questions to our guides (for example, Trina Kudlacek and Alfio di Mauro joined me onstage for my Italy talk), and they’d have fun sharing their experience with our audience.
Guides are multitalented. Between travel talks, Irish guide Cathie Ryan and Italian guide David Tordi (who both perform as musicians when they’re not guiding tours) entertained our travelers with delightful sets of music. They artfully interwove Italian and Irish musical themes. I’m so thankful that our guides make music such a delightful part of our travels.
And everywhere, there were guides meeting with travelers — helping them turn their travel dreams into smooth and affordable reality (by selling them a Rick Steves tour!).
