Question about guides

If it's anything like the Munich-Salzburg-Vienna tour, you will have both. One guide who travels with you and a fresh face in each city who provides local insights.

That sounds perfect - thanks for your reply!

Your guide will be with your group for the entire tour. Sometimes you’ll even have two guides for the tour. Local guides are also used at various times. You’ll be well taken care of!

The local guides may be a specialist of information at a museum where you see and hear about the highlights, or they show you their city with a walking tour of the city. Be sure to bring shoes that are comfortable for both walking and also standing for awhile during the explanations of the city history or monuments.

Your main guide is great for bonding the group together, sharing info on the bus, energetic and calm in situations, etc. I appreciate their hard work, so we can focus on the enjoyment of the trip.

This is how RS confuses people. The person who will be with you the entire time is actually called a Tour Director. (Industry term.) RS like to call thems guides.

Then, depending on your tour, you may get some local guides as well.

What's the difference? According to the tour industry, a Tour Director/Tour Manager travels with the group from place to place handling all the administrative duties of the tour. They may guide as well.

A Guide takes you on a city tour, a museum, etc. It's only for a few hours and in one place.

RS like to call his TD's guides so he can compare them "guides" from other companies. Not other TD's.

It's also one of the reasons RS asks you to take the guidebook with you. Some of his "guides" are not licensed and they can't give you a tour in areas where you need a license to guide. So they suggest you use the walking tour in the guidebook.

How do I know this....I've worked as both a Tour Director and a Guide.

This is a wonderful tour and after 12 RS tours remains one of my favorite as well as my guide for that tour, Dimitri!

You've got your question answered but I will add to take up your guide on anything extra they might offer. Rick's tours are not like some which have all the good stuff as "optional tour experiences" but sometimes the guide will offer to arrange a wine tasting, an extra dinner at your expense or in Switzerland offered to take anyone who wanted to go up the Schilthorn. Do it! BTW, don't even actually look at the transportation costs for the gondolas/cog train in the Lauterbrunnen Valley. Just put it on a CC and enjoy yourself!

On this tour you will also have the same bus driver for the whole time as well (one exception when he has to take a mandatory day off and usually another driver does the Florence to Rome run.) The drivers are part of the group, eat with the group and are so interesting to interact with. Their driving skills are unmatched as well.

Thanks for all this additional information Pam! I’m even more excited now 😁

Pam, what is the difference between your guide offering you a wine tasting, or dinner, or extra something for an additional cost and the tour company offering the same thing to you ahead of time?

With other tour companies, the tour director can't offer anything extra, at a cost, without the tour company approving. It's a way of protecting the passengers. Optionals offered to passengers without the tour company's permission are known as 'black optionals" and are grounds for dismissal.

To me the difference is we paid the venues directly and the guide just made the arrangements for those that were interested. We did a wine-tasting in Bacharach - each table paid the restaurant and we divided among ourselves. For the extra dinner in Rome (which he offered so we'd be well-positioned for the Pantheon), we ordered and paid on own own to the restaurant but he called and made the reservation for the # of people. For the gondola up the Schilthorn, he might have paid for our tickets and then we paid him back the exact amount of the ticket in either Swiss Francs or Euro - I honestly do not remember. We went on the first car up in the AM so it was the least expensive.

He also made reservations for anyone that wanted them for a gondola ride in Venice and walked those that were interested to the gondola stand.