Rick Steves Is Tired of Hearing 'Have a Safe Trip'

Today's episode comes to you from the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in Seattle.

Recently, my co-host Ryan Knutson sat down with travel business mogul Rick Steves in front of a live audience.

Steves talks about his business and his progressive politics and how they intersect.

You can watch the interview as a video on Spotify.

Rick Steves' first trip to Europe was in 1969 when he was 14 years old, and he's been addicted to traveling ever since.

He parlayed that addiction into one of the most well-known travel businesses in the U.S.

He's got a line of popular travel guides, he's taken tens of thousands of people on tours around Europe, and he's had a travel show on PBS since the 1990s.

Rick Steves has built a philosophy around travel as a political act, an act that fosters understanding, challenges stereotypes, and in his words, fights xenophobia.

At the same time, something strange is happening.

Travel has never been easier, but while record numbers of Americans are now traveling abroad, the U.S.

is also becoming more nativist and more isolationist.

So, what does Rick Steves make of this contradiction?

Are people just traveling the wrong way?

And do people even need a Rick Steves in the age of smartphones and artificial intelligence?

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Ryan Knutson.

Coming up on the show, a conversation with Rick Steves.

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So I'm, as we've been talking about, and everybody in the green room knows, I'm on parental leave right now, and my nine-month-old son is here, hopefully sleeping with Jake with the babysitter right now.

But when they reached out to have a conversation with you I was like,

I have to do this.

And because I'm on parental leave, I felt like the first question that I have to ask you is about my own upcoming trip, which is my wife and I are taking our nine-month-old and his older brother, who's two and a half, to Europe this summer.

It's a very controversial thing to do, to travel with small children.

So what's your take?

Well, I had

20 years of experience with traveling with our kids

and they were the same ages as yours two and a half years apart or something like that and my big advice if you've got kids your age and you ask where should we go

I would say to grandma and grandpa's on the way to the airport

you know

I mean yeah they're right there grandma and grandpa there you go

Honestly, I would say if you've got

two-week vacation,

have a week with the kids out of Van Forest here and then have a week of adult travel in Europe.

Having said that, we never did that.

We took our kids to Europe every spring.

We took our kids out of school throughout the grade school years in April and they had a better education in Europe.

And I am so committed to the idea that if you can afford it and if you're willing to compromise from an adult travel point of view to make it a family

occasion, it is beautiful parenting and you will never regret it.

I really believe if everybody traveled before they could vote, this world would be a much more stable and just and beautiful place.

Well, I want to talk about that, but before I do, I want to talk a little bit about business, given that we are primarily a business show.

So before the pandemic in 2019, you had $100 million in revenue, and then how many years of zero revenue, just 2020, 2020?

Well, throughout the pandemic, we had negative revenue because we had 100 people on the payroll and no income.

And you kept them on the payroll, too.

Yes, we did.

But as a private business, you know, you don't have the pressure from shareholders to, other than yourself, to...

We don't have the pressure from shareholders, but if shareholders were smart, they would understand that when you have a great team of 100 people and suddenly something unpredictable happens and you can't earn any money, you don't want to disband that team.

You'll need that team when you get back into normalcy again.

That's the pragmatic wisdom of keeping your staff together.

But I think it's also just an ethical thing to do.

For 30 years I had been making money off of my hard-working, mission-driven staff, and for three years I'm not making money off of them.

Well,

you know, that's part of being a good businessman.

And I just think I'm so thankful I was able to, I had enough reserve capital to make the payroll through those years.

That's a lot of payroll, 100 people for two years or three years.

But

right now, looking back at it,

I'm just, it was sabbatical for everybody.

And, you know, thank God we're back on board and life is good.

Yeah, you recently published a book on the hippie trail, which is just your notebook basically from 1978 when you were 23 years old,

going from Istanbul to Kathmandu, which you discovered during the pandemic.

We're all looking for things to spend our time with.

I was binge-watching Rick Steve's show so I can have some escapism.

You were looking through your notebooks and reminiscing on old times.

But one of the things that really struck me in your book

was how you said that you packed enough film to take nine photos a day.

Right.

And I thought to myself, wow, I take nine photos a minute when I'm traveling.

I'm old enough to know that I just have that memory that you would never go click, click, and I'll do another one click because you had nine a day because you had 36 in a canister and you're on the road for 70 days and you already have 20% of your packing light bag filled filled with film canisters, you have divided out, you know, 20 rolls times 36 divided by how many days.

And that must have, if I did my arithmet correct, it must have been nine a day.

Yeah, I don't know if you fact-checked yourself there at the end, but it's also just like you can't,

a trip like that's just not even possible in today's world where you, you know, you were going around, you were writing about how you're on the bus.

And you don't really know much about where you're going.

You're asking people that are sitting next to you, do you know anything about where we're headed and what we can do and get there?

And it was just, you're flying by the seat of your pants.

But now, I mean, that era is gone.

Or do you think there's still ways you can find that kind of magic?

Ryan, you're talking about an age when there was

not a glut of information.

There was not enough good travel information in 1978 when I did this.

And when you leave Istanbul and head east, for me, it was like going behind the dark side of the moon.

It was an adventure.

You can't do that adventure today.

But the takeaway from my hippie trail book is that, okay, I'm 23 years old, 1978, doing the ultimate road trip, on the last year, by the way, that you could do it, before the Shah fell and Khomeini came in in Iran and before the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan the next year.

So that was the end of the hippie trail.

It was the perfect time in my life, the perfect time to do the hippie trail.

And I journaled it with a 60,000-word intimate journal, and I documented it with all these photographs.

I mean, it was just like 45 years later, it's just dying to be a book, and I didn't even know I had it until COVID.

And then I remembered I have this journal.

But about can you do that now, the takeaway is you can't do the physical trip, but you can have the hippie trail experience, even in our comfortable age, if you get out of your comfort zone, recognize we can learn more about our home by leaving it and looking at it from a distance, and when serendipity knocks, you say yes.

And I am inspired by people who are in their 20s now that are having a hippie trail experience by doing that real travel.

And that's the fundamental decision travelers have to make is am I just going to do the bucket list thing or am I going to do let's explore the world and lose ourselves in it.

And I just love,

that's our mission where I work is to equip and inspire Americans to venture beyond Orlando.

That's it.

When was the last time you were in Orlando?

I stay away from Orlando.

I don't think they liked me there.

I was doing some.

Their slogan just must be, Rick Steves is wrong.

No, no, no.

Here's the deal.

Go to Disney World four or five times, but then try Portugal.

You see?

Well, so, as I was mentioning earlier, more Americans are traveling abroad now than they ever had before.

There's a Pew study out not too long ago that said that 76% of Americans have left the country once, half of Americans have traveled to between one and four countries.

And yet, we're seeing in the US over the last several years this America-first political shift,

isolationism, people are becoming more nationalistic.

Are people traveling wrong?

Well, I think the people that are traveling are the people that probably don't need to travel as much as the people who are not traveling.

Half of America does not travel.

Half of America dreams of building walls.

The takeaway when you travel is you realize how it is folly to think that you'll be safer if you build walls.

If you build walls, you're planting the seeds of instability and danger for your society.

And what we need to do is build bridges to the other 96% of humanity

outside of our country.

And that's just a beautiful thing.

It's a beautiful thing from a ethical point of view and a love your neighbor point of view and it's also a beautiful thing from a just a pragmatic security point of view.

It is so tragic to think that we can be safer by withdrawing from the world.

We are the most fearful, I'm just so tired of hearing people say have a safe trip.

When somebody tells me have a safe trip, I'm inclined to say well you have a safe stay at home

because where I am traveling statistically, and I know statistics are optional these days, but where I'm traveling statistically is safer than where you're staying.

Americans live in a a very dangerous place, you see.

So I lament the loss of Bon Voyage.

Remember, if you're old enough, when people used to say, Bon Voyage, have a great trip.

When I went on the most dangerous trip of my life, Hippie Trail, it was Bon Voyage.

And I came home with a broader perspective on track to have a very fulfilling life.

That was a beautiful, beautiful experience.

Fear is for people who don't get out very much.

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You've gotten more attention or become more outspoken in recent years about your political views, which you've been talking about a little bit so far.

You endorsed Kamala Harris for president.

You're pretty outspoken as an advocate for the legalization of marijuana.

How has that affected your business to be more outspoken about politics?

I guess I've gotten to the point where my business is strong enough that I don't make my personal political decisions based on what's good for my business.

I remember when we were getting into the Gulf War, and I just didn't believe that this is the right thing for our country to do.

And I put up a peace sign outside of my office in Edmonds.

And I was across the street.

just walking down the street from my office and a man said, hey Rick,

I bet you if you realized how much that peace sign was costing your business, you would have thought twice about putting it up.

And it occurred to me, really, you would support a war you don't believe in for what's good for your business?

That honestly did not even register to me that that was an option for a person with any ethics at all to support a war by calculating how it would impact its business.

And now I've, you know,

I've been an outspoken advocate about how racist and non-productive and wrong-minded and against civil liberties our prohibition against marijuana is, for example.

And I'm bringing home a European sensibility to that because in Europe, a joint's about as exciting as a can of beer, you know, and they it's a laughable thing in Europe that they would lock anybody up for smoking marijuana.

Well, every once in a while, I'll meet somebody women out giving a talk and they say, Rick, we know what you think about marijuana, and we're not going to take your tours and we're not going to use your guidebooks.

And all I can think is, Europe's going to be more fun without you.

But so, do you feel like

you are alienated part of a potential customer base?

No.

Well,

okay,

does the openness that I don't believe President Trump is good for America, does that alienate people from going on my tours?

That would be the immediate question, I suppose.

I think

people, when they want to go to Europe, they want good information, and my information is so good that they will just hold their nose and consume it.

You know, because we get a lot of

people all across the political spectrum taking our tours.

We take 30,000 Americans on our tours every year.

We have 100 busloads of Americans in Europe today at the same time all over Europe.

And for me, I love the fact.

Not that we've got a bunch of progressive people that love their escargot

having a good time, but we've got a lot of people that are dealing with some pretty exciting exciting culture shock who are having their fears challenged and their sensibilities challenged by other societies that have the same challenges that are addressing those challenges differently and in some cases better so for me the most profitable person on my tour bus would be the more conservative person that's going to have a more broadening experience so

I rally my guides.

I've got a hundred Europeans who are guides for me.

And,

you know, they say it's complicated when we have mega people on our bus.

Hey, this is what it's all about, is to everybody wants to better.

I think everybody wants to understand the world better.

And here's our opportunity.

It's a golden opportunity to help people come home with a little broader perspective.

And

long story short,

if my political outspokenness has had an impact on my business, if it scared away a few people, that has more than been

mitigated by how much of a publicity stunt it's been.

Because you get more headlines.

And more, I get far more headlines.

But then you sort of legalize marijuana and all of a sudden twice as many people are buying your books.

What's funny, you know, I was asking people, I was like, I'm interviewing Rick Steves, like, what should I ask him about?

Everyone's like, ask him about marijuana.

Have you thought about getting into the marijuana business in some fashion?

I've had so many marijuana entrepreneurs want to name a strain of cannabis after me.

And

as a matter of principle, I want nothing to do with the green rush, you know.

And actually,

that's been a good decision from a business point of view because the cannabis industry is in terrible straits right now.

What are some of the names that people have pitched to you?

I don't I have no idea.

For those strains?

Uh-huh.

Yeah, Rick Rick Sativa, something like that.

Yeah, something like that.

Rick Rick Rickstiva.

I don't know, but for me,

it's easy to joke about marijuana, but for me, it is a very serious issue dealing with racism, mass incarceration,

stoking

a black market that enriches and empowers gangs and organized crime rather than provides a highly regulated

industry that employs people.

And fundamentally, it's against our civil liberties.

So I give talks all over the country about marijuana.

And I can, as a business person, as a Christian, as a parent, as somebody who would be kind of you'd surprise, what do you really think about that?

I have no problem saying I work hard all day long.

If I go home, I'm a tax-raising, church-going, grandkid, adoring, hard-working American citizen.

I have every right

to just

smoke a joint and stare at the fireplace for three hours

because that is my civil liberty.

Now,

do I have a right to sell it to a minor or get high and go drive?

Of course not.

Throw the book at me.

But it's a principled civil liberty stance.

And it's one of those things that I can, I just love taking home sensibilities from my travels.

That's just one of the beautiful values of travel.

Have you thought about traveling more within the United States?

Because,

you know, one of the things that people, there's a lot of, there's a big divide, speaking of bridges that need to be built between the left and the right, and people, I think you'd self-describe yourself as a coastal elite, well-traveled.

But

a lot of people on the right feel very talked down to and very paternalistic.

No, it's absolutely true.

And that's something I need to work on.

Lately, Ryan, I've been thinking a lot about walls.

I'm fascinated by walls.

The Berlin Wall, the wall

in Belfast between Protestants and Catholics, the wall in the Holy Land.

There are physical walls and there are metaphorical walls.

We have a huge wall in our country between red and blue, and it's a metaphorical wall.

And my challenge is to better understand the people on the other side of our metaphorical wall.

When I give a

I've been talking at rallies lately, and I don't wear blue.

I specifically wear purple.

Foreign visitors to the U.S.

are declining pretty significantly.

I think Canada might be the number one decline year over year.

Would you give your best Rick Steve's pitch for why people should come to America as a tourist?

To be honest,

If somebody asked me, should I go to, if they're a European or Canadian, should I go to America?

I'd say no.

Why?

Because we should pay the price for our policies.

I,

you know,

I think the only thing that's going to wake America up, sadly, is the equivalent of the cost of eggs.

You know, I mean, I would not vote, and I'm privileged.

I've got enough money to pay triple for the eggs, and I'll still have my omelette, you know.

But it is so fundamental, the values that are on the line for us right now.

I think

we're going to pay a steep price in many realms, and one of them will be tourism.

Tourism is one of the biggest employers on the planet.

And

the brand of America is something I've long been tuned into.

The brand of America is something for real.

And with Obama, America was cool.

And people wanted to consume America.

They wanted to wear America.

Today, do you think people want to consume and wear America?

I don't think so.

and it's going to just get worse.

We have one minute left.

I want to do a little speed round, so as quick answers as you can possibly come up with.

Have you thought about retirement?

I just turned 70 and I'm so thankful I found a niche and I've been doing the same thing with laser focus where I've meant to be and I'm having more fun than ever.

Most people will travel when they retire, so what would you do?

I just,

I'm like, I spend 100 days a year in Europe working on my guidebooks, working on my TV shows, and helping my tour program.

It's like breathing straight oxygen.

So I don't know what I,

I'm out of balance.

I'm just a hopeless case.

I just love doing my work and I'll do it as long as I'm physically able.

It's a big turn on for me.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing I learned about you when I was doing this research was that you do not participate in any airline frequent flyer mile programs, which I thought has got to be the biggest loss of value for you.

You must be a million miler many times over.

I have no idea.

But I'm in such a good mood when I go to the airport, I don't want to remember whatever you have to do to get your frequent flyer miles.

Nothing, nothing.

You just sign up for the money.

I don't even want to think about it.

It's like, it's a gimmick to get me to have loyalty to this airline instead of that airline, and it pollutes my whole...

I don't, I can't explain it, so I don't defend it very well.

As a frugal traveler, I will say I think you're missing out on some opportunities.

We've got to wrap up, though, but there are people who have built their careers on getting miles away.

Yeah, the points guy, you know, you can use it.

Yeah, but I'm the noble guy.

So many points.

The points guy will be pulling his hair.

What are you doing, Rick?

I'm the travel guy.

All right, thanks, everybody, so much.

It's been great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's all for today, Sunday, June 29th.

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