The last time I checked my RS Spain tour scheduled for Oct, it was showing “Filling Fast”. I just now checked and it’s listed as FULL. And going down the list of random RS tours shows all of them as FULL.
Is this a prelude to cancelling the rest of the year? It would be such a disappointment. Deep down, I was holding out hope that I could still go to Spain in Oct with RS.
At the very least, they're not taking a waiting list or any new tour members. And it certainly signals the possibility that those tours will be cancelled. Though obviously, it would be easy to open them back up if conditions were to allow. It's hard to give up hope. I know. My May tour was cancelled.
My logic tells me that, even if individual travelers might venture out, it would be a difficult risk for a tour operator to do so.
Following up on CW- it is a way to stop taking new reservations via the computer system.
It blocks the system The RS FAQ states they are not accepting new reservations nor accepting payments on existing reservations. Part of this is simple economics in avoiding thousands upon thousands of dollars in bank charges. In simple terms: you pay by credit card and the merchant gets 97% of the money and the bank keeps 3%. But for a refund the merchant has to give back 100%, even though they only received 97%. Thus every “return” is an actual out of pocket loss for the vendor. Numbers above are just very general examples, different banks/cards have different fee protocols. Thus with a cancelled tour RS has to go into his pocket and payback money he never actually received....his company is bleeding money and doesn’t need more losses so no new reservations and not accepting payments for reservations on file...
As for the rest of the tour year—-too early for a death call but....people need to get real. Social distance with 28 people plus a guide and bus driver....no bus is that big. RS takes over many small restaurants...again, social distancing nearly impossible with a group that large. Lots of posts in the past (pre-Covid) about sick people on tours and tour guides not having authority to remove them....just imagine how a group would react to an ill tour member showing up with a fever and cough on day 1. (I’ve been on a tour-precovid- where that happened and it wasn’t pleasant as the self-centered B didn’t care if others got sick as it was her trip of a lifetime....). That would get interesting real quick with Covid being active. Just MY opinion but anyone since March thinking they are taking a bus tour in 2020 needs some serious psychological counseling and to get out of the river (de Nile).
I too noticed that, today, 3 June 2020, all the tours went from "sign up", "filling fast" and "wait-list" to FULL. I had a tour to Belgium starting 2 Sep, but cancelled a week ago. Now that tour has disappeared from the list. I would guess that RS did not want people to sign up, make plane reservations, etc. only to have to try and get their money back when the tour is cancelled. That is sound business planning, for his company and for the tour members. We cancelled because we felt there was a good chance to get trapped in Europe for a two week quarantine in some hotel. And social distancing on the tour would have been impossible. Social connections are what the tours are all about. Europe is opening up slowly, and now just to only EU countries. The EU mentioned that in the future, they would be opening up to countries with well controlled Covid-19. That is not the US right now. There was also some mention about having some "Certificate of Testing" to be able to get into Europe. Here in Oregon, testing is not an easy thing. Six weeks ago, my sister in Wyoming, lost her sense of smell and drove up to a testing site to be tested. She got the test and the positive result in one day. That is not an experience here in Eugene. We just did not feel that we could make this trip, that we would be welcomed in Europe and would not have a Rick Steves' experience that we all know and love. I was in Amsterdam on Sept 11, 2001, and really don't want to get trapped again, although tours through the Heineken Brewery was great. We will be back next year.
