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 famous public broadcasting show and YouTube channel — relished returning. “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, TV programs, and 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 local 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, inspire, and teach about their culture, art, and 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 museums.
Do you think Americans are ready to travel overseas again?
I would say it’s not for everybody, but it’s not a big deal if you don’t mind being well-organized and enthusiastic about following the regulations and rules. And Europe is ahead of the United States, I believe, in fighting Covid. There’s enormous respect for masks. More museums require reservations to get in to ensure it’s not crowded. It’s a blessing. I was just in the Vatican Museum and enjoying the Sistine Chapel because it wasn’t so crowded. That was a fantastic experience because I had to wear shoulder pads the last time I was there.
You have long held that travel can do a lot of good globally, but what about carbon emissions, overcrowding, and other adverse effects of travel?
Climate change is a severe 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. 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 fighting climate change. We passed 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.
Landlords worldwide 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, you’re part of the problem. And in terms of other issues, when you issues rose, you can consume in a way that doesn’t dislocate pensioners and ruin neighborhoods.
But we would be at a significant loss if we stopped traveling, and the world would become more dangerous. We must travel in a “leave only footprints, take only photos” 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 massive 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 more intelligently, with more experience, and more economically and efficiently. And everybody has their 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 more experiential, thought-provoking, and transformational way. You know, you can have transformational travel or have a shopping trip and a bucket list.
You’ve said you don’t track 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 their travel. You could have been to 100 countries and learned nothing, or you could have gone to Mexico and been 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 souls 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 them together into a six-hour series of European art and architecture. We’ve been working on the show for the last year, and it will be my opus magnum, my big project. It will make art accessible and meaningful to people in a way 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 of looking at it through the lens of a traveler. I’m very excited about it. It’s just an incredible 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 tours and 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 were confident about the spring of 2022, so we immediately opened the floodgates, and those 24,000 people who had to cancel two years ago were basically signed up. And now we’ve got 29,000 people signed up out of 30,000 seats for next year.
So we’re doing great, but we must continue the diligence in our society and Europe of fighting COVID responsibly. So I’m losing patience with anti-vaxxers. Maybe they’re exercising their liberty but also impacting many 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, the train, the bus, or the museums. The world is getting progressively smaller for people who want to travel but do not get a vaccination.
Do you think travel will ever feel normal again?
Certain people decided they didn’t want to travel after 9/11 because they didn’t want to deal with security. Those people have a pretty low bar for folding up their shop. I got used to the deposit 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.
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