Rick Steves Interview

Let me see if I am getting his main points. Rick is saying European tourism is facing several challenges. It’s a victim of own success in that the crowd sizes at iconic sites detract from the site and make it less special. Things like cruise ships that can dump 3000 tourists in one spot can overrun a place. Airbnbs which are great alternatives to hotels can upend neighborhoods and change the character of a place making it no longer as precious for tourism and no longer a great home for the locals. Too much tourism is performative. Checklists vs. experiential. Does this capture what he is saying?

It’s a hard solve too. Even if places turn into “mosh pits” much of local economy becomes dependent that. And consumers (travelers) want to see the famous places to get their selfies.

Happy travels

Meh. Rick has contributed to, and profited greatly from, the "mosh pit". Two of his three "England" tours include "The Cotswolds" - in reality it's just three villages that now resemble a zoo and have been utterly ruined by tourism.

The only blessing is that those villages are like a sacrificial anode, and the countless other quaint English rural areas are left remarkably unscathed.

By Rick's own statements his tours serve 25K-35K people per year...being wildly optimistic shall we say quadruple that to include independent travelers directly influenced by him...that's 100K-150K..total, world-wide...hardly a blip in the crushing throngs simultaneously flooding every European city at once. And I daresay the vast majority who follow RS niche travel philosophy comport themselves in an exemplary manner.

I've been a Rick fan since my 1st travel guide in the 1980s. It helped me plan my 1st trip over the Atlantic & was called Great Britain in 2 to 22 days. In a way he taught me to travel. For the past 28 years I've enjoyed 9 of his tours. I listened to this as a fan, but also just to get his take on better ways to travel in today's world, but realizing it is just one man's opinion. It is a fun interview and I enjoyed immensely. I loved that he talked about over tourism in our U.S. cities, too. Frank, thanks for sharing this.

I believe it was Pogo who said "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

I enjoyed this very much. As Laurie Beth said, it’s nice to hear Rick’s current perspective. (I also subscribed to Ari and Audie’s feed. They’re both great interviewers.)