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Rick Steves on the Return of Travel and Why It Matters

The travel writer and TV personality is back in Europe, planning itineraries for next year. Travel, he says, can help us understand the world. Here’s how he recommends doing it.

By Paige McClanahan

On a recent morning, Rick Steves was wandering around the ancient Tuscan town of Volterra with a new crop of tour guides. His company’s trips to Europe are set to resume in February after a nearly two-year pandemic hiatus, and the guides were midway through a nine-day trip around Italy to learn “what makes a Rick Steves tour a Rick Steves tour.” One of the stops on their itinerary was Volterra, a medieval hilltop town whose stone walls are 800 years old. Mr. Steves — who has been to Tuscany many times for his popular public broadcasting show and YouTube channel — was relishing being back.

“We’re surrounded by the wonders of what we love so much, and it just makes our endorphins do little flip-flops,” he said during a phone interview.

That unabashed enthusiasm has fueled Mr. Steves’s empire of guidebooks, radio shows and TV programs, as well as tours that have taken hundreds of thousands of Americans overseas since he started running them in 1980.

Along the way, Mr. Steves has built a reputation for convincing hesitant Americans to make their first trip abroad — and that first trip is often to Europe, which Mr. Steves has called “the wading pool for world exploration.” But he also speaks passionately about the value of travel to places like El Salvador and Iran, and he’s open about how his time in other countries has shaped his views on issues like world hunger and the legalization of marijuana.

But Europe remains Mr. Steves’s bread and butter, and he’s back on the Continent now — both to prepare for the return of his tours and to work on a six-hour series on European art and architecture that he hopes will be broadcast on U.S. public television next fall. As he wandered through Volterra, we talked about why he doesn’t count the number of countries he’s visited, why his tour company will require vaccinations and why a world without travel would be a more dangerous place.

Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

What does it feel like to be back in Europe?

I’m working with 20 guides here and people are almost tearfully emotional about the rekindling of tourism. Professional tour guides have been on hold for two seasons, and they’re just so filled with joy to be able to do what they do, because guides are wired to enthuse and inspire and teach about their culture and their art and their history. And it’s just so fun to be here and be filled with hope. And while we’re still in the pandemic, we’re also coming out of it and there’s an energy in the streets and in the museums.

Do you think Americans are ready to travel overseas again?

I would say it’s not for everybody, but if you don’t mind being well-organized and if you’re enthusiastic about following the regulations and rules, it’s not a big deal. And Europe is ahead of the United States, I believe, in fighting Covid. There’s a huge respect for masks. More museums are requiring reservations to get in because they want to make sure it’s not crowded. It’s kind of a blessing, actually. I was just in the Vatican Museum and really enjoying the Sistine Chapel because it wasn’t so darned crowded. That was an amazing experience for me because the last time I was there, I had to wear shoulder pads.

You have long held that travel can do a lot of good in the world, but what about carbon emissions, overcrowding and other negative effects of travel?

Climate change is a serious problem and tourism contributes a lot to it, but I don’t want to be flight-shamed out of my travels, because I think travel is a powerful force for peace and stability on this planet. So my company has a self-imposed carbon tax of $30 per person we take to Europe. In 2019, we gave $1 million to a portfolio of organizations that are fighting climate change. We gave half that amount in 2020, even though we stopped bringing people to Europe after the pandemic hit. It’s nothing heroic. It’s just the ethical thing to do.

And in terms of other problems, when you go to Europe, you can consume in a way that doesn’t dislocate pensioners and ruin neighborhoods. Landlords anywhere in the world can make more money renting to short-term tourists than long-term local people . So, if you complain that a city is too touristy and you’re staying in an Airbnb — well, you’re part of the problem.

But we would be at a great loss if we stopped traveling, and the world would become a more dangerous place. We need to travel in a “leave only footprints, take only photos” kind of way. What you want to do is bring home the most beautiful souvenir, and that’s a broader perspective and a better understanding of our place on the planet — and then employ that broader perspective as a citizen of a powerful nation like the United States that has a huge impact beyond our borders.

How do you try to encourage people to travel in a meaningful way?

The responsibility of the travel writer is to help people travel smarter, with more experience, and more economically and more efficiently. And everybody has their own idea of what that is, but for me, it’s about remembering that travel is all about people. It’s about getting out of your comfort zone and trying something new. So we’re trying to help Americans travel in a way that’s more experiential and more thought-provoking and more transformational. You know, you can have transformational travel or you can just have a shopping trip and a bucket list.

You’ve said that you don’t keep track of how many countries you’ve visited. Why is that?

Why would you? Is it a contest? Anybody who brags about how many countries they’ve been to — that’s no basis for the value of the travel they’ve done. You could have been to 100 countries and learned nothing, or you can go to Mexico and be a citizen of the planet. I find that there’s no correlation between people who count their countries and people who open their heart and their soul to the cultures they’re in.

I hear you’re working on a big new project. What’s that about?

Something I’ve been preparing to do for 20 years is to collect all the most beautiful art experiences we’ve included in our TV show and weave it together into a six-hour series of European art and architecture. We’ve been working on the show for the last year, and it’s going to be my opus magnum, my big project. It’s going to make art accessible and meaningful to people in a way that I don’t think we’ve seen on TV before. I’m inspired by people who have done art series in the past, and I’ve got a way to look at it through the lens of a traveler. I’m very excited about it. It’s just a cool creative challenge.

What have things been like for your tour company since the pandemic hit?

Well, 2019 was our best year ever. We took 30,000 Americans on about 1,200 different tours and we were just euphoric. We had 2020 essentially sold out when Covid hit, and then we had to cancel everything, so we had to send back 24,000 deposits. We all hunkered down, and I’ve done what I can to keep my staff intact. A couple of months ago, we decided we’re confident about the spring of 2022, so we opened the floodgates and immediately those 24,000 people that had to cancel two years ago — basically, they re-signed up. And now we’ve got 29,000 people signed up out of 30,000 seats for next year.

So we’re doing really good, but we just have to continue the diligence in our society and in Europe of fighting Covid responsibly. So I’m kind of losing patience with anti-vaxxers. Maybe they’re exercising their liberty, but they’re also impacting a lot of other people. So we’ve just decided to require that people have vaccinations to go on our tours. Here in Europe, unvaccinated people would be standing outside most of the time anyway — because they couldn’t get into the restaurants, onto the train, onto the bus or into the museums. The world is getting progressively smaller for people who want to travel but not get a vaccination.

Do you think travel will ever feel normal again?

There were certain people who decided they didn’t want to travel after 9/11 because they didn’t want to deal with security. You know, those people have a pretty low bar for folding up their shop. I got used to the security after 9/11, and I’m getting used to Covid standards now. But I do think that, come next year, we’ll be back to traveling again — and I hope that we’ll all be better for it.

Paige McClanahan is the host of The Better Travel Podcast .

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram , Twitter and Facebook . And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places list .

Acclaimed writer Rick Steves talks Bellingham, travel tips ahead of Village Books event

Mar. 22—Rick Steves might love Bellingham as much as your grandmother loves Rick Steves.

"Bellingham's just a place where, I think, Kathmandu (in Nepal) is a household word," the famous travel writer said in a phone call with the Bellingham Herald. "People are outward looking, people prioritize for travel, and people are thoughtful."

That last detail is especially important for the "Europe Through the Back Door" author, who views his job as inspiring thoughtful travel.

"The mindless traveler, they just walk down the main street in Amsterdam, Damrak it's called. And right there between Hooters and the Hard Rock Cafe, they find a box office selling tickets to commercial gimmicks," Steves said. "They'll buy those tickets and they'll think that's what there is to do in Amsterdam here — the torture dungeon, and the wax museum, and the Dalí exhibit."

Steves is coming to town on April 4, for a talk hosted by Village Books at Bellingham High School. The Edmonds-based author has a history of making the drive an hour north, dating back to his days as a self-published author in the 1980s. More recently, he's given talks at Village Books, which he called "one of the most beloved bookstores in the United States."

"For about 20 years or more, I think, I've been coming up to Bellingham to give a talk with Village Books," Steves said. "We try to do this each year and share the latest on European travel, so people can learn from my mistakes rather than their own and travel smartly."

How COVID changed European travel

Steves, who just returned from a trip to Italy, said he plans to focus his talk on the ways travel in Europe has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Europe's always changing, my job is to make mistakes, take notes," Steves said. "When I get ripped off I celebrate, they don't know who they just ripped off. I'm going to learn that scam and pack it into my talk, and come home and share it with people."

Over the pandemic, tourist hot spots grew to appreciate the controlled crowds caused by COVID-19 safety protocols, according to Steves, and many kept them in place.

"In Europe, they are enjoying the not being in a pandemic with gusto, it's just wild and crazy. But one thing they kept is a lot of formerly crowded sites appreciate being able to require people to have timed entry, so they don't have a mob scene at their front door," Steves said.

Travelers who haven't adjusted to these new protocols risk a trip full of delays and pivoting on the fly.

"If you didn't know that, you might very well go to the Sagrada Família church in Barcelona, or to Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam, or the Borghese Gallery in Rome and think you can just walk in," Steves said. "But no, you cannot buy a ticket at the door, you've got to have it in advance at a lot of these places."

That's a problem for Steves, who's made a career of advocating for well-planned travel.

"A trip, if it's well-planned, can be a life-changing experience," Steves said. "I love the idea of transformational travel, that just involves a little bit of planning."

Where, when and how to get tickets

Where: Bellingham High School, 2020 Cornwall Ave., Bellingham

When: The event starts at 7 p.m., April 4.

Tickets cost $10. Get them here.

(c)2024 The Bellingham Herald (Bellingham, Wash.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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I need a new travel agent

Does anyone here have a preferred travel agent in the Northern Virginia area? Looking for someone who can do both traditional airline business but also cruises. Pls contact me off list. Thanks.

Since you have been on this site for a while, I would think that you would recognize that the vast majority here are their own travel agent. With the internet routine airline reservations and cruises are pretty easy to do. Generally travel agents are only useful for very specific reasons. Is there a particular reason you are looking for a travel agent?

I know you can book cruises by yourself but you do often get more and better perks when booking with a travel agent that specializes in cruises.

For airfare I personally don't see any advantage of using a travel agent. However, some people feel that travel agents see more options for flights than they do - possibly because they are not that comfortable with booking their own on the internet, we all have different comfort levels with using the internet.

A good travel agent can be useful. Until ours retired, she booked many trips for us, had good hotel recommendations, found discounts and perks, etc. She maintained all our frequent flier codes and would research multiple alternative itinerary options without prompting. She got us seat assignments when we couldn't, checked in for us when we were overseas, changed return flights on short notice, and most helpfully, arranged coordinated flight itineraries for three couples, flying from and back to different cities. For straightforward basic RS-type travel, yeah, its probably not necessary. Very helpful for cruises - there're a lot of things to know.

As you can see many people doing their own booking make mistakes. Grenada vs Granada. Or don't consider what are reasonable connections, airport congestion, or the downfalls of booking separate tickets. And how often someone comes on the forum and appears not to know about open jaw ticketing, for example.

But the key is a good one. We probably all know someone who decided to take a course to be a travel agent mainly so they could get promised discounts for their own travel. Some of them only know Vegas and Cancun.

The trouble with travel agents is that most of them don't charge you anything (directly, at least), they work off commissions, which means that they tend to book you into whoever pays the most commission, and that's generally the most expensive properties in a particular town.

I never use travel agents, and I never use booking websites. I've stayed in a lot of small towns where a booking website only offered 1/3 to 1/2 of the properties in town, and those were usually the most expensive places to stay (the ones that had enough profit to afford the booking website's commission).

Not that the agents don't earn their money doing what you could have done yourself. But if you want to keep costs down, spend the time and effort and DIY.

Are you a AAA member? We love our agent in Charleston SC. We've used her for 25yrs. We no longer live in Charleston, but still use her and with phones and computers, you don't have to live in the same state anymore. If you are an AAA member, there may be a good one in VA - but 'good' is the crucial word -- as we've had several AAA agents we didn't care for -- which is why we went back to our agent in Charleston even though we now live pretty far from her. PM me if you are an AAA member and want her info.

THANK YOU chinalake67 for being the first poster to actually assist the OP.

People use travel agents for different reasons and serious benefits can be had especially with the cruise industry.

Why the OP wants to use a travel agent is NO one’s business and the OP certainly doesn’t need to be put down for using one; no matter how long she/he has been on this forum. And cost is NOT an issue with many travelers on this or any forum. While some may search to the ends of the earth to save 50 cents on a room, many do not as other factors are much more important to them then price. My first 3 factors are: location, location, location, followed by quality of the hotel and rooms. Only then do I consider price (of course, all things being equal I’ll take a $400 per night room over one for $600). And in that regard a travel agent can be very effective. For many time is worth money. For many ease of process is worth money. For others comfort is worth money.

I need one too.

I lost my travel agent due to COVID stopping travel. She was doing a lot of cruise bookings which apparently pay travel agents a decent commission. Because no one (in their right mind according to her) are going on cruises, her income has stopped. She will continue to work until all the travel she has booked currently for her customers is done, and then retire and do her own traveling again. She has been there for me for 30 years. She was our official agent at American Express travel when I was working my previous career. She went solo when AmEx mostly got out of the travel agent business. Her assistance during the Icelandic volcano travel interruptions helped me get to my RS tour in Ireland only a day later than I had planned because she somehow found the only flight from London to Dublin on the day the tour started that was not blocked by the volcanic ash and got me on it.

When I asked her if she could suggest another travel agent who might provide even a portion of the hands on service she provided, she just laughed. And laughed, and laughed, and laughed. She probably is still laughing. She told me that the era of "good" travel agents is passed.

Good luck finding someone.

Onefastbob, you didn't actually answer the OP's question or assist him/her. Irony eh! ; )

has anybody read the OP's profile? If so, you would have seen that she is no newbie.

She has travelled previously - a fair bit.

She is entitled to decide if she wants a travel agent.

Sorry, I don't know any or I would share.

Hi Wanderlust58 - I just sent you a message with some of my suggestions. Good luck in your search! Jeanie

PS - A good travel advisor will charge you fees to book your travel so they don't rely on commissions. Far too many are struggling in this economy. According to an industry report, about 75% of them will be out of business by 2021. It saddens me that so many people in this industry will be unable to support themselves.

Guess we have to wait to hear back from the OP responding to the very good posts in response to the OP's original question.

Why was I looking for a new a travel agent? Onefastbob and Nigel are absolutely right in saying that it’s no one’s business why I do, and I appreciate their saying so. Folks, I don’t need to be chastised for it. It’s not nice to be snarky.

But, for those of you who are so concerned/critical, do allow me to explain why I asked for leads for a new TA. Travel agents who are experienced, pleasant, and hard-working are hard to find. While I plan quite a bit of our travels, there are tedious things I don’t like doing, and airline reservations are one of them. My TA (who, alas, retired and her replacement pales in comparison) knew exactly what we like: which airlines, seats, taking care of handicap access issues, special meals, getting the frequent flier stuff right, arranging for drivers and/or car rentals, etc. She knew I liked options and she provided them, saving me time in searching out deals. I don’t need to park myself in front of the computer to do this kind of stuff. Paying a small fee for that service is worth it to me. (She didn’t work on commission.)

We also cruise quite a bit, and I have found that a good TA is your best friend in booking, getting upgrades and perks, and the like. Personally, I was very happy with the generous bar set-up and chocolate covered strawberries she had delivered to our stateroom on the first day of each cruise. Over the years, she had a few excellent suggestions for pre- and post-cruise accommodations, and restaurants, which I appreciated. It’s not always about money. Comfort, convenience, and service are important to us. And, bonus, years ago I learned from her to book a future cruise onboard, get all the goodies that go with booking then, then move the reservation to the TA and collect on her services and perks as well. Seems reasonable, doesn’t it, to pay a few dollars for service like this?

No one agent knows it all. The good ones realize this. For travel to the areas with which she was less familiar (Egypt, Antarctica, and China) she provided me excellent contacts to get started in planning those trips. Without that, I would have been shooting in the dark.

In addition to the helpful ideas here, some people have contacted me via private message (aka off-list). Their thoughtful and helpful messages have given me a few excellent options, and I appreciate them very much.

I agree with you 100%. 😊😊😊 Good luck

Our AAA agent gets us AAA discounts on all our European hotels, so we actually save money booking with her over booking on our own. She lets us choose 3-5 star hotels, so the prices aren't higher as one person mentioned. AAA can get discounts just about at any hotel. She also 'has our back' if/when anything at all goes wrong. While we don't use her for everything, she certainly saves us money when we do. We even use her here in America as she saves us money on places like WDW, Universal, the National Parks, tours, etc. There are also AAA discounts at many restaurants as well as hotels. We have had a few TA we didn't like, but once you find one who works hard on your behalf, they are invaluable.

Well, we are AAA members, although we haven't used them for travel in years; we have it mostly for roadside service. However, I am currently planning a trip to German/Austria/Switzerland for an indeterminate time in the future, so I will go to a AAA office and see what accommodations they can find for us for our itinerary.

After some preliminary searches over the last few days, using the AAA website and my membership number for discounts, I have found that: 1. AAA does not offer many properties in Germany/Austria/Switzerland. About half the towns I will be staying in on this next trip (and most of the towns I have stayed in before) do not have properties offered by AAA. 2. Those properties they do offer tend toward the multi-star properties, which I kind of think are overpriced. I can usually find perfectly fine, less expensive accommodations by using town websites or Google Maps and booking direct. 3. I'm planning to stop in Lindau, Germany, which has some big, beautiful 3 & 4 star hotels on the harbor there. None are offered on AAA. In fact, AAA offers no places on the island, itself.

I always find a lot more choices on town websites or Google maps wherever I go in Germany/Austria than are offered on a website like Booking.com. AAA offers even fewer. Despite what Booking claims, I can almost always get a better deal booking the same place directly with the hotel rather than with a booking website.

I'm not a very experienced traveler ... or is it tourist? I even check bags. So I almost always get a travel agency in the location I am heading to to assist me. I find names on LinkedIn and research the hell out of them. Then of after a dozen emails and a few phone calls if they seem to be in tune with me, they get my business. I used one for my current trip and it was an excellent decision.

I can't help you as I live in Canada, but just wanted to tell a funny story. About 23 years ago, I booked, through an agent, a flight to the UK ; arriving at Heathrow, and leaving from Glasgow. Then a few days later, I saw the exact trip advertised in the paper, with a free rental car included in UK trips.. So, I went back to the travel agent to ask that she add on the car. She said she would, then called me later to say that we were not eligible for the car as we were flying home from Glasgow. Puzzled, I said that Glasgow is in the UK; and she argued with me that no, it was in Scotland. Huh?? It took some convincing to get our car, but we finally managed to get her, a travel agent, to concede that Glasgow was indeed in the UK. I've never used a travel agent since for land based travel, only for cruises.

Glasgow might not be in the UK much longer. I understand a lot of Scots are unhappy with Brexit and want Scotland to exit the UK so they can rejoin the EU.

S J inspired me, and this would qualify as a hi jacking of the thread, except it is a back handed compliment for the many services of AAA. I let that membership go because one of my credit cards offered "free" road side service. 3 months later my fan belt broke in stop and go rush hour traffic in Omaha. Called the free roadside number... the representative asked me for the name of the nearest large town. I repeated Omaha. She said "ma'am, I can't help you until you give me the name of the nearest large town."

The next day I called AAA, apologized for my fickleness, and begged them to take me back.

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