While my wife and I are registered for our 4th tour next April, friends of ours have been waitlisted. I was wondering what others experiences with being wait listed have been, if you made the trip or changed dates. What percentage of travelers end up having to cancel or change their dates so you were able to make the tour?
Thanks for any input you can provide.
I think that you can find out what number you are on the list by calling the RS office.
No one here can answer that question. Call the Rick Steves' office and directly ask the question. We were waited listed last year. I think we were second on the list. Never cleared. I asked similar question but only received vague answers. The answers were appropriate but still vague.
We have been waitlisted two times and have been able to do both tours.
Thanks for the quick response. I should have added this information to my original post. I have contacted the tour department and our friends are #1 on the waitlist. They do go in order and said typically they have a 10% drop rate across all tours. So we will keep waiting and hope for the best.
Funny. I am on a waitlist and called the Rick Steves office to find out where I stand. I was told there is no priority order. They said when an opening occurs the office notifies everyone on the waitlist. Whoever signs up first and pays the deposit is in.
I suggest considering an alternate tour with available spots for all the travelers. In Jan. 2019 we signed up for a tour starting late Sept. 2019 and we were waitlisted. We were the first on the waitlist and no one dropped out for the next four weeks. In our case, we were selecting tours available for the dates we planned to travel, so we selected a different tour with openings so we could start planning. Something else worth considering is whether it matters if you want to score the $100 discount while it’s available. We put a deposit down near the end of the Jan. Promotion, and there must have been a lot of other folks who signed up for tours at the same time. By the time we found out we were waitlisted, the promo was over, so we missed out on saving $200. Good luck, Ellen
Well after 3 calls to the tour office and two different answers the third call has broken the tie. When a cancellation opens up on the waitlist emails go out to all on the list the first to get back gets the slot. I an very disappointed in this policy but if that has proven to be their best solution I guess that’s how it’s going to work.
You may want to look elsewhere as other Tour Operators automatically confirm you to the tour taking you off the waitlist. I can think of this first to e-mail gets confirmed a bit too strict. If I sign up for a waitlist what happens if I am out of the country and away from e-mail? By me being on the waitlist it means I am taking Auto Confirmation. How can they expect you to be at your laptop and quickly get back to them? We have a life too.
