Ok how do we do it without Rick?

Well...I've ALWAYS done it on my own. So of course you can. I would recommend using a Rick Steves guidebook of course to plan, if there is one that covers your destination. You can always hire local tour guides in each place if you like.

What specific question do you have - about planning? Lots of us can help you with itineraries, etc. if you post them for critique.

Which tour(s) are you looking at?

Did a cursory glance and found some are up, one down and others pretty much the same. Those that were up looked like about a 5% increase. Without a specific example, not sure I say "have gone up considerably"

As Andrew said DIY is always an option

Happy travel$

I’m doing my 14th trip to Europe soon - three of those were a RS tour, and I have one this year. We can give you lots of ideas for the education part of your question, but I think you’re going to experience a large gap in the camaraderie part of a tour that you mentioned first.

There’s so much information on the internet! It’s so much easier to research a country now and find where you want to visit. www.Booking.com is my favorite place to look for lodging - hotels, B&B, or apartments, and the reviews can only be written by people who stayed at the location which makes it much better than a TripAdvisor type that’s full of fake reviews. www.Rome2rio.com will give you ideas for modes of transportation available between any two locations, but be sure to go to the actual train company for true times.

The most helpful advice from us will probably come if you can give us an idea of which country or tour that interests you. I will be transparent and say that yes, I’ve planned ten trips, and we (or I solo) had a fantastic time, but it’s also a huge hobby of mine, so I don’t mind putting in countless hours planning it. If that doesn’t sound appealing, then I would suggest just buying the RS guidebook for a country and following it to also have a nice trip.

Rick’s guidebooks have been our number one resource for going on our own for over 20 years. He’s got information on how to get to places, things to do and see when you get there, and how to plan time and lodging. He also recommends tour guides for specific cities and sights. So you’re still not totally without Rick, but using his suggestions, rather than paying for his set tour itinerary and pre-arranged rooms and transport. His book format is very user-friendly. Check out a copy from your library for a look, or buy a guidebook for your destination. The book prices keep going up, too, but are still affordable.

I would start with

• RS and other guidebooks
• Read through the materials here for research. Watch the videos too
• Ask questions in the relevant forums here
• Plan out your trip and run it past the very helpful forum members
• Make it an iterative process until you’re happy with the results

Fortunately the RSE tours I’m interested in have not gone up. Select days seem to be up but I suspect that’s related to holidays and festivals. BTW don’t forget that RSE offers a tour alum discount. So for 8 tours you get $400. The 2024 tour discussion indicates that there’s an early booking discount too. Another $100. When I go on my own I miss the great RS guides.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/tours/2024-tours-are-here

Ok I was too general. We have been eyeing RS Scandinavia 14 day tour but $5850 pp is getting up there. I do know the Scandinavian countries are expensive. And we will always use Rick’s guidebooks, know and love the format. Would love to figure out how not to spend almost $12K for a couple to see those countries in a knowledgeable and fun way. As Jean said, the camaraderie will be missing. Can’t fix that by ourselves.

Luv2Travel, here's my suggestion then: plan out a trip to Scandinavia that mimics the itinerary of the RS tour. Choose hotels in the same places - pick realistic dates. Use sites like Booking dot com to find hotels or approximate to what you might expect going on a RS tour.

Add in other costs like transportation, museums...whatever is normally included in a RS tour. (I've never taken one - you would know better than I would.) If the tour usually has its own bus, you'd take a train or bus probably to get place to place. Figure all of that in our at least take a rough guess.

So what's the difference in cost? Because that's what it comes down to, right? I suspect you might find that doing Scandinavia by yourself might not be cheap either. In any case, you're not talking about saving $12K for two couples...you're talking about the difference vs. the tour - $6K? $4K? Figure out how much you save doing it yourself. And then based on that, decide whether it's worth the savings.

Traveling independently and doing a RS tour are two different types of experiences, but both can be great.

One thing I have done in the past is look at the itineraries of the tour for some of the experiences that help make a tour special. I look at the hotel lists and scrapbooks for ideas. I don’t buy guidebooks but look at the ones at the library for ideas.

An example is the Ireland School of Falconry. My sister and I traveled independently to Ireland but I had seen this on the RS list and knew my sister would love it.

I have long wanted to visit Norway. I am a bargain hunter and recently found a cruise special for a 14 day “land of the Midnight Sun” cruise this July that offered a balcony price of $2300, no single supplement,with $850 of on board credit. I jumped on it! Maybe something like this would help meet your budget and give you some people to interact with. It isn’t the same experience, but it might meet your needs.

Whatever you do, do not attempt to recreate a tour itinerary as a DIY trip in the same timeframe. Tour logistics are more efficient: DIY requires a bit more time. Not much more, but for example if that 14-day RS tour visits 7 locations, I'd stick to 5 max in a DIY trip.
And even in Scandinavia, you can do it for far less than the $400/person/day excl. airfare of the tour, that's for sure! $250 should be plenty.

Your answer was helpful. An an engineer, I always kept spreadsheets of trips, and a general savings percentage when I would do a true apples-to-apples comparison of all expenses between a RS tour and doing the exact myself was 33-40%. So, for your $12K, you would be saving approximately $4K.

If you like an adventure and planning, then you can buy the RS Scandinavia and enjoy the process of planning your trip!

I mentioned earlier that the camaraderie element will be harder to duplicate. If I’m doing a solo trip, I always plan some type of activity at least every four days where the small group is speaking English. It could be a city bike tour or a cooking class, etc. These aren’t a replacement for being with a group for your entire trip, but I really enjoy them - both for the activity and the connections as a half-day group. When planning a trip myself, I create a piechart of expected expenses in categories. If the wedge for the “Activity” is too small in comparison, I will find more fun activities. In other words, don’t shortchange yourself on expenses where it makes a better trip. As an example, I will choose to stay in a cheaper hotel to use that extra money for a better overall experience doing something more fun during that day.

I had been interested in the Scandinavian tour also but wanted a bit more freedom to choose itinerary. I found this company. https://discoverscandinaviatours.com/ They move you from place to place, have different price ranges of hotels to choose from, and can arrange for a guide. I'm not much of a tour person, preferring to go at my own pace and where I want to go, so this would be a good compromise for me.

Is it possible for you to generate more income to keep up with the reality of inflation. I know someone that retired on a fixed income that got a part time job to supplement that in order to continue to afford the same level of leisure. Or you can DIY and stay in hostels which cost a lot less than the hotels Rick Steves tours use and you can find comrades easy in hostels.
I started in hostels before I could afford a Rick Steves tour or my own DIY travel and hotels

If you like Rick's tours, then besides getting his guidebooks to plan your own trip, why not also use his advice. There is plenty on this website.

Go to the left column and explore his articles under "Explore Europe," "Travel Tips," and "Watch, Read and Listen."

Or, even though you have been to Europe, you can get a copy of "Europe Through the Back Door" which will tell you almost everything you need to know to plan your own trip to Europe.

I would like to underscore Balso’s advice: do not try to stop in as many locations as the R.S. Tour in two weeks, or take an extra week, at least, if you must do it all. It takes time to get your bearings, figure out the town/city and transportation, for example, not to mention researching where to eat on your own once on the ground. Those tour guides and bus drivers take a lot of the guesswork out of personal logistics.

We always travel on our own and figure we can get 30-50% more time for the same money as a R.S. Tour. Do we get the personal guides? No. Although we do spring for some private tours or small group tours. We are perfectly happy chatting to people we meet but happy to have quiet dinners together and go at our own pace.

I start with a list of locations and within that outline what I want to see and do in the pace before deciding on number of nights. I read a couple of guidebooks to get to this stage. Unless we are merely transiting for a flight, we spend no less than 3 nights in a location and usually a week, especially in a big city or an area that offers a lot of side trips of interest.

Then I populate a spreadsheet and as mentioned above, start digging into lodging options usually using Booking.com. I look at routes and how to get from A to B efficiently, and how long I would spend at each activity/site/tour so I can see if the things I want to do pencil out in the timeframes I sketched. Then I start refining. I find the process and research fun and stimulating.

A word of advice on routing. Do not assume A to B is as easy as hopping on the tour bus. It might be totally different when you are using public transportation. We try not to drive in Europe but YMMV depending on public trans options and where you want to travel.

Apparently Scandinavia doesn’t lend itself to Rick’s “My Way” lower-cost tour plan, as it’s not an option, unlike Italy, for example. Some destinations are seemingly just going to cost more, and if there are substantial distances to be covered, the transportation will be a sizeable portion of the planning and price considerations. Rick’s 2024 tours are $300 more than this year’s, so it’s not getting cheaper by waiting. And unless there’s a tour company that offers a similar itinerary for a lower price, Rick’s tour is hard to beat- camaraderie included. Or start making you own reservations to DIY and don’t look back.

A lot of great advice posted on this thread for alternative to RS tour.
One thing to keep in mind is that on a tour you have a great efficiency of transportation. You can duplicate hotels and sights from a RS guidebook, but it is very hard to duplicate efficiency of transportation. A 14 day RS tour will probably need 17-21 days to do on your own. You cannot get the ease of a RS bus to pick you up from your hotel at 0700 for that move along or day trip to a sight or a city. Nope, you have to deal with the times of public’s transport. And that will not be as timely as an arranged transport. Waiting for trains or buses. Walking to or from the station to the hotel. Finding the hotel. All these little things come into play and need additional time, that adds up.

Hello all. Although we have not traveled as much as some. We have traveled and lived overseas. When discussing independent or organized tours we have done both. We actually prefer cruising because you only have to unpack once but that limits where you can go. When we travel for leisure we want it to be as stress free as possible. That's why we prefer using a tour company. If there are issues with transportation, hotels, etc. The tour company handles it. For the most part.... Doing independent travel it's all in you. Planning, travel, accomodations, etc. In our experience, the drawback with organized travel with a tour company is the hectic schedule some trips have. We just booked a My Way tour for 2024 as it seems to be more flexible in-that if you don't want to take a tour on a certain day you don't have to and the transportation and lodging is taken care of. This will be our first time with this type of trip. Looking forward to it! Happy Travels everyone.

Woke up this morning to lots of great input and advice, thank you all for giving me much food for thought. Sounds like I need to get spreadsheet-ing. Travel forum members are super!

Norway's really tricky because of a combination of extremely high costs, geographical challenges, thin rural population that means infrequent bus service in many areas, and underbuilt infrastructure (especially hotels) in some places due to (one assumes) a short tourist season. If you want to see the fjords, it's likely to take more time than you expect, which means more nights in $$$ hotels--assuming you can find a room, which can be quite difficult.

I'm not a cruise person, but the thought of incorporating a cruise into a trip to Norway (especially) is worth exploring. I wouldn't be happy with a one-day cruise stop in Oslo or Bergen (and one day in Stockholm would be seriously depressing), but there are multiple good places to visit in western Norway where one day would be adequate for most people--Alesund (if not spending the day going to the Geirangerfjord), Trondheim, Tromso, etc.

Those willing to rent a car for rural exploration in Norway might save enough on hotel costs by being able to craft an efficient itinerary to make up for what I am guessing are painfully high car-rental rates.

In my experience, if I take 60% of th cost of an organized tour (e.g. Rick Steves, Exoticca, etc), I can pay for everything (including airfare, accommodations, transfers, meals, entertainment, attractions, souvenirs, etc) for a comparable trip planned on my own. I have often come under budget and have never been off by more than 10%.

After reading the original post last night [5/16] I looked at the RS Scandinavian tours - there was a sale for one date with $500 off. The sale is gone this morning. So it would have been a relative bargain price for the tour, although the inflated cost of near-term airfare would probably have negated the savings.

In terms of tour prices increasing for next year, I wonder whether a good portion of the increase is due to changes in exchange rates. The US dollar has been weakening, and since the tours are purchased with USD, those same dollars may not buy as much when converted to Euro, pound sterling, etc. And maybe RS Europe was able to purchase foreign currency cheaply when the dollar was stronger, thus keeping increases lower than they might have been otherwise, given the global inflation we're living through right now.

In addition, since Sweden, Norway & Denmark don't use the Euro, could their currencies typically be stronger against USD compared to other countries, thus a factor in the higher cost to visit?

As for planning independent travel, I've also used the RS tour itineraries as templates, editing according to interest, time available, transportation options, etc. The RS guidebooks are incredible resources, but as we've seen, they reflect Rick's biases [which he freely admits to], and are selective in what they cover. So you really need to use other sources as well. I just found the best maps of Rome that I've come across in the Frommer's guidebook.

And method or style of travel can also be a factor - while London is branded as an incredibly expensive city, we found that it could actually be quite reasonable if you occasionally frequented places such as Pret a Manger, the Sainsbury's on Cromwell Rd in South Kensington, ethnic restaurants, the cafeteria in the crypt, etc. And of course riding the tube from Heathrow rather than hiring a private car service.

Have you looked at other tour companies? I went to Scandinavia with Gate 1 at a much lower cost. I have taken 7 tours with them.

Do what?

Plan a trip? Book rooms? Get from place to place? Figure out what to eat? Figure out what to do? Understand what you're seeing?

All the above?

If all the above just buy a general Europe guidebook and read the introductory chapter or two. I think. Rick, Steve's might have put one of those out ;)

In terms of cost, a major factor is whether you feel you need to stay in hotels of the same general standard Rick's tours use. I do not. If it's well-located and clean with functional air conditioning, hot water and Wi-Fi, I'm good.

Nice thing about Scandinavia - air conditioning isn’t quite as essential as in more southerly destinations. That doesn’t mean places are necessarily that much cheaper, but it might help with lodging choices and costs.

Take a look at the Thon and Scandic hotel chains. They are reasonably priced (for the area) and you can save a few dollars if you join their free loyalty programs. Some include breakfast.

If the logistics of it all (selecting hotels, arranging transportation) is overwhelming, consider a travel agent. They can help make all those arrangements.

There are tons of local guides if you want to do a guided day tour. Rick’s books will have recommendations, and you can also look at AirBnB experiences for ideas.

We travel independently and I do all the planning. I love the research and the freedom to decide what we do and where we go based on our family’s interests. We also travel more slowly than most tours. But it is a lot of work to plan everything. What you’re paying for on a tour is someone else to make all those decisions and arrangements for you. Personally, I’d rather have more days and put in the legwork myself, but that’s just me.

Travel4Fun said it perfectly. I think you really have to enjoy the planning process and have a good system for organizing all the moving parts and give yourself plenty of time to research and understand what it is you want to accomplish. With a tour they figure everything out and you just show up WHICH can also be a component of the trip you plan by booking walking tours, day tours that can be wine tours, food tours, bus day trips to multiple places, booking a private car etc.

My main resources are this travel forum, get an idea and then run with it researching it, or I put it in a spreadsheet for future research when I plan on visiting that place/town. I also watch travel vlogs on YouTube which has been my main source of ideas and courage to try new things, as I see others navigate it successfully or not and learn so much. Everything from videos on how to take a train from X to Y, how to pack, how to order food, what the local cuisine is, what the cultural norms are, different neighborhoods and experiences. I am now thinking this is my hobby as I like nothing more than grabbing a cup of herbal tea, laptop in hand with my excel spreadsheet open and just binge watch travel vlogs.

I am going to respond to the statement, "What you are paying for on a tour is someone to make all those arrangements for you." I know that is an element for many people, but there are some additional aspects of a RS tour that don't fit that answer. I'm going to try to list what I see are the major advantages of a RS tour (I haven't been on any other group tours) that go beyond someone making the arrangements.
1. A knowledgeable and personable guide. The guide is constantly educating the group in a friendly approachable manner about what we are about to see or seeing. This background is very helpful and adds a great deal to the sites visited.
2. Unique experiences that are not easily replicated. A pasty making class in Cornwall, a visit to cheese alp high in the mountains of Switzerland, a risotto making contest in Lugano. These are just some of the experiences I would probably not have found or been able to access independently.
3. A congenial group of fellow travelers. This is a real plus for me as a solo traveler who enjoys traveling as a shared experience.
4. Efficient logistics by experienced people. They just don't make the arrangements, but they make them efficiently in a manner that local experience makes all the difference.

I am a planner. I love to plan. Having someone make arrangements for me isn't my main motivation when taking a tour and I think it is a mistake to assume that this is the only reason why people take tours. I am sure that it figures highly for many that don't enjoy the planning aspect.

I think the key for OP is to determine what were the aspects of the RS tours that really made them special for her. Then see how some of those same needs can be met in an alternate manner that fits her budget.

How do we do it on our own?

How do you travel anywhere in your own country? You buy a ticket, book a hotel, and then go. It's really not hard.

GPS means it is near impossible to really get lost, mobile internet means you can do just about anything on the go, mobile phone translation means you can read in foreign languages. Travel has never been easier or required less effort from travelers