Why Doesnt Rick Steves Digitize His Art for Travelers
Q. AND A.
Rick Steves on the Return of Travel and Why It Matters
The travel writer and Television personality is back in Europe, planning itineraries for next year. Travel, he says, can help us sympathize the globe. Here's how he recommends doing information technology.
On a recent morning, Rick Steves was wandering around the aboriginal Tuscan town of Volterra with a new ingather of tour guides. His company's trips to Europe are fix to resume in February after a nearly two-twelvemonth pandemic hiatus, and the guides were midway through a ix-twenty-four hour period trip around Italia to learn "what makes a Rick Steves tour a Rick Steves tour." 1 of the stops on their itinerary was Volterra, a medieval hilltop town whose stone walls are 800 years erstwhile. Mr. Steves — who has been to Tuscany many times for his popular public dissemination testify and YouTube aqueduct — was relishing being back.
"Nosotros're surrounded by the wonders of what we love so much, and it just makes our endorphins do footling flip-flops," he said during a phone interview.
That unabashed enthusiasm has fueled Mr. Steves's empire of guidebooks, radio shows and TV programs, also as tours that accept 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 brand their commencement trip abroad — and that first trip is oft 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 Republic of el salvador and Iran, and he's open up about how his time in other countries has shaped his views on issues like globe hunger and the legalization of marijuana.
Simply Europe remains Mr. Steves's bread and butter, and he's back on the Continent at present — both to prepare for the return of his tours and to piece of work on a six-hour serial on European art and compages that he hopes will be circulate on U.Due south. public goggle box next fall. Equally he wandered through Volterra, nosotros talked about why he doesn't count the number of countries he'south visited, why his tour company will require vaccinations and why a world without travel would be a more dangerous identify.
Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
What does it experience similar to be back in Europe?
I'm working with xx guides here and people are almost tearfully emotional nearly the rekindling of tourism. Professional tour guides have been on hold for two seasons, and they're simply so filled with joy to be able to do what they practice, considering guides are wired to enthuse and inspire and teach about their culture and their art and their history. And it's merely so fun to exist here and exist filled with hope. And while we're nevertheless 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 prepare to travel overseas once more?
I would say it's not for everybody, but if you don't listen being well-organized and if you're enthusiastic most following the regulations and rules, it's non a big deal. And Europe is ahead of the U.s., I believe, in fighting Covid. In that location's a huge respect for masks. More museums are requiring reservations to get in because they want to make sure information technology's non crowded. It'southward kind of a blessing, actually. I was merely 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 lot take long held that travel can exercise a lot of good in the world, but what well-nigh carbon emissions, overcrowding and other negative effects of travel?
Climate modify is a serious trouble and tourism contributes a lot to it, only I don't want to be flight-shamed out of my travels, considering I think travel is a powerful strength for peace and stability on this planet. So my company has a self-imposed carbon taxation of $xxx per person we accept to Europe. In 2019, we gave $1 meg to a portfolio of organizations that are fighting climate modify. Nosotros gave half that amount in 2020, fifty-fifty though we stopped bringing people to Europe after the pandemic hit. Information technology's naught heroic. It'due south just the ethical thing to practice.
And in terms of other problems, when you go to Europe, y'all can consume in a fashion 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. Then, if you complain that a metropolis is too touristy and you're staying in an Airbnb — well, you lot're office of the trouble.
But we would be at a keen loss if nosotros stopped traveling, and the world would become a more dangerous place. We need to travel in a "go out only footprints, take only photos" kind of way. What you want to exercise is bring home the about beautiful souvenir, and that'southward a broader perspective and a meliorate agreement of our place on the planet — and and so employ that broader perspective as a citizen of a powerful nation similar the United States that has a huge affect across our borders.
How practise 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 than economically and more than efficiently. And everybody has their own idea of what that is, but for me, it's nearly remembering that travel is all near people. It'due south about getting out of your comfort zone and trying something new. And so we're trying to help Americans travel in a style that'southward more experiential and more idea-provoking and more transformational. You know, you can have transformational travel or you can just have a shopping trip and a bucket list.
You lot've said that you don't keep rail 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 washed. You could take been to 100 countries and learned zero, or yous can go to Mexico and be a denizen of the planet. I notice that there's no correlation between people who count their countries and people who open their centre 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 fine art experiences we've included in our Television set show and weave information technology together into a six-hour series of European art and architecture. We've been working on the show for the terminal year, and information technology'southward going to exist my opus magnum, my big project. Information technology'due south going to make art accessible and meaningful to people in a fashion that I don't call up we've seen on Television receiver before. I'm inspired past people who take done fine art serial in the past, and I've got a way to look at it through the lens of a traveler. I'yard very excited about it. It's merely a cool artistic challenge.
What take things been like for your tour company since the pandemic striking?
Well, 2019 was our best yr ever. We took 30,000 Americans on about 1,200 different tours and nosotros were just euphoric. Nosotros had 2020 essentially sold out when Covid striking, and and so we had to cancel everything, so nosotros had to send back 24,000 deposits. We all hunkered downward, and I've washed what I tin can to go along my staff intact. A couple of months ago, we decided we're confident about the jump of 2022, so we opened the floodgates and immediately those 24,000 people that had to cancel two years agone — basically, they re-signed upwardly. And now we've got 29,000 people signed up out of 30,000 seats for side by side year.
So we're doing really good, but we just accept 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, merely they're besides impacting a lot of other people. So we've just decided to crave that people have vaccinations to go on our tours. Here in Europe, unvaccinated people would be standing outside most of the fourth dimension anyway — considering they couldn't become 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 merely non become a vaccination.
Do you call back travel will ever feel normal again?
In that location were certain people who decided they didn't want to travel afterward ix/11 because they didn't want to bargain with security. You know, those people have a pretty low bar for folding upwards their shop. I got used to the security later on 9/11, and I'm getting used to Covid standards now. Simply I do think that, come next year, we'll exist 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 .
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/30/travel/rick-steves-europe-tours.html