How often do Rick Steves tours get cancelled due to low enrollment?

I've herd that tours are occasionally canceled, but we were on a Best of London tour once that had only 9 people!

How far off is the tour you want? I remember that one time the office let us sign up for one tour, while staying on the waiting list for our preferred date. The folks in the office are really very helpful.

I'd agree with Jane that it would be helpful to know how far off your tour is?

Here is a thread from this fall where a tour was cancelled late (In my opinion) due to the guide having a family emergency but that is different from what you are asking.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/switzerland/tour-cancellations-can-happen

I'd probably call and talk with the office to see about the cancellation rate for your particular tour. I will say that when I've looked at tours within about 2 months of travel that they have all been full!

mlstimetotravel, I understand the concern, as you have to make airline reservations, which would be problematic.

You can always call the tour office and talk to them. It seems to me that the a lot of people dont make commitments until after the holidays.

Stan's post made me think of something else. On Rick's "Test Drive a Tour Guide" and tour reunion Saturday he usually offers $100 off on tours that weekend. I'd probably wait until then to sign up so you can get a discount.

https://www.ricksteves.com/tours/tour-reunion/test-drive-classes

IF you do decide to sign up and the enrollment is still low, I'd also get travel insurance. Well, I purchase it anyway - not because of worry that a tour will be cancelled but other "what-if's".

I am not sure you can get travel insurance to cover a cancellation. You would get a full refund so nothing lost. Our experience is the reserve -- wait listed and nobody cancels. And you should always have a plan B regardless of what your plan A is.

Anyone know how often they cancel tours?

My bet would be the RS staff knows.

Ask them

Unless your tour is in December, I wouldn’t worry.
You will notice that there is a part of the website called “tours on sale”. The last thing Rick Steves Tours wants to do is cancel a tour. It isn’t good for their customers and it isn’t good for them. They will increase the marketing for a tour that is slow to fill and offer discounts.

It happens very seldom that tour departures get cancelled. The sales department tries to gauge demand before "putting it all out there." Some tour dates that currently have low attendance may have been just recently released for sale after other dates filled up. Of course, others are correct that the number of "selling months" before departure makes a difference, so I'd hope that departure is at least three months from now. The tour reunion weekend at the end of January also usually generates a good number of bookings.

It may not happen often, but it happened to us just this year. We booked the Basque tour for late May. We received the confirmation on February 6 telling us it was OK to book our travel. We bought plane tickets on February 9. On February 14, we received a call telling us the tour had been canceled. On February 15, our tour confirmation documents arrived in the mail.

To the company's credit, we were allowed to apply the deposit to another tour although there weren't many left at that late date that matched our timeline. We chose Turkey and had a wonderful time. The Rick Steves company also reimbursed us for the change fees on our airline ticket although we ended up spending more for the ticket to Turkey than we would have if that was our original destination.