Hi from Rick: My Tour Guide Dream Team

Just a few days ago, I stood on the street outside our home office in Edmonds, Washington, squinting up to a second-story window, where a photographer held up her hand and signaled: three…two…one…

And then, all around me, 120 Rick Steves tour guides raised their arms and yelled "cheese!" — in dozens of languages and accents.

We just wrapped up our latest Rick Steves Tour Guide Summit, where we fly in our guides from every corner of Europe for a week of meetings, bonding, and social fun. It's an exciting reminder that every year, over 35,000 travelers entrust their dreams to me — and I entrust those dreams to this amazing and talented group of guides — my tour-guide dream team. That's a responsibility that I take very seriously. And after this week together, I'm totally confident.

The summit is essential to keeping our tour program healthy and vibrant. We get our guides up to speed on all the important work going on in the home office so they know how we support each and every departure, have a chance to catch up one-on-one, and gather for lengthy sessions to fine-tune each of our more than 40 itineraries — reviewing hotels, meals, and experiences. And we welcome back our OGs — that's original guides — who return from their well-earned retirement to help ensure the next generation remains connected to the spirit and roots of Rick Steves' Europe.

Just as important is the social component of the summit. Our guides are a close-knit bunch…and yet, they rarely see each other in person while on tour. So, on top of all those business meetings, we fill each evening with social fun. We party at my house, clink glasses at the local tiki bar, host a happy hour with our office staff, enjoy a very American night out (this year we went bowling), and cap it all off with a costumed grand finale. It's the best possible version of community-building: With every sip, selfie, and hug, our guides are reminded that — while they might be scattered across a continent — they're all working for the same team…with the same mission.

This builds consistency among our guides, which is a beautiful thing. A Rick Steves guide doesn't just march their group on a check-off-the-bucket-list parade, reciting dates and trivia. Instead, they find and open doors that offer genuine glimpses into their culture…creating unforgettable, perspective-broadening experiences. And our tour members notice this difference. When I bump into happy tour alums on the road, it doesn't matter which tour they were on — whether with Apostolos in Greece, Agnieszka in Poland, or Francisco in Spain — they always say, with striking enthusiasm, "I loooved my guide!"

And I love our guides, too. At our last summit, I was diverted — emotionally and physically — by the challenge of ridding my body of a cancer-riddled prostate gland. But now I'm thankfully healthy again, so I had reason to find a special joy in this year's gathering…and I made up for any lost social connection with gusto.

Of course, all of this doesn't just happen in one weeklong summit. Year-round, our amazing team in the home office is hard at work ensuring our tour program runs smoothly (imagine the complexity of organizing 35,000 trips of a lifetime), while also supporting and nurturing our guides as they're out on the road. In a couple weeks, I'll be in Italy hosting our annual training tour, where I get to "tour guide" our newest guides, leading them through an intensive week of training on our values and travel style. They're already solid professional guides…but our job is to turn them into Rick Steves guides.

While I'm still basking in the afterglow of last week, let's take a trip to sunny Spain in this month's Tour News. We'll hop aboard a day-by-day slideshow filled with the energetic diversity of Spain from Barcelona to Sevilla; see a sultry flamenco show with snapping fingers, clicking castanets, and machine-gun footwork; meet a tour guide originally from Spanish Basque Country; and learn why recent tour members love traveling in Spain.

Flying over a hundred tour guides from across Europe to Edmonds, putting them up and feeding them all week, and transforming our office into an all-hands-on-deck tour-guiding incubator isn't cheap. But for me, it's one of the best possible investments we can make in our tour program. That's because this summit ensures our Rick Steves guides are enthusiastically in sync with our mission, values, and travel style…and it helps create that unique esprit de corps that makes our guide team such a consistent part of a traveler's dream come true.

Happy travels,

Rick