Quotes of the Day
Since the Babylonians invented currency around 3,000 B.C., people have been eager to blow it abroad — but they've always needed somebody to tell them where to go. Chaucer's pilgrims were guided by religion; Marco Polo was drawn by the fabled splendors of Kublai Khan's court; 18th century English gentlemen on their Grand Tour sought out the centers of art and learning. Over the past 23 years, hundreds of thousands of Americans have followed a man named Rick Steves.
Never heard of him? He's virtually unknown in Europe, and yet Steves is the reigning guru for Americans vacationing abroad — especially those seeking "unspoiled" locations. And that's the problem: now that his 25 books have sold a total of 3 million copies, and his public-television travel show, beamed to 61 million homes each week, is about to enter its seventh series, Rick Steves may be a menace. His books and package tours ($110-$170 per day) unleash hordes of tourists on tiny, pristine, off-the-beaten-track places. He's also one of the top vendors of European railpasses in America — selling 10,000-13,000 a year from his home base in the small town of Edmonds, Washington.
When Steves speaks, in prose that's equal parts purple and practical, Americans listen. Kathy Keffeler, a high school Spanish teacher who is planning a trip to Gimmelwald, Switzerland, with her two teenage daughters, is typical of his followers. After poring over other tours for six months, they decided Steves' offered "the perfect blend of comfort and adventure." Hailing from Rapid City, South Dakota, which is perennially thronged with visitors to Mount Rushmore, Kathy and the girls wanted to get "away from the tourist crowd," and a Rick Steves' tour offered the chance to "explore out-of-the-way, small, quaint places." A tiny, idyllic alpine village with stunning views, no cars and a 1,371-m altitude, Gimmelwald is about as quaint as they get. And Steves, an unusually gifted and passionate travel writer, does the place justice in guidebooks and TV shows that are often laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes stupendously corny, but always infectious.
Maybe too infectious. Each year the 140 villagers of Gimmelwald — which escaped development by cleverly declaring itself an "avalanche zone" — brace themselves for an avalanche of about 18,000 North Americans, the vast majority clutching Rick Steves guidebooks and gulping in the local culture along with the fresh mountain air. "In the beginning, we were afraid to have all these Americans here," says Walter Mittler, who runs the 25-bed Hotel Mittaghorn, where Steves stayed on his first trip to the village. "Now we're used to it, and try to make them feel welcome," he notes, adding that almost all his clients are "the Rick Steves crowd."
The irony is that Steves promotes a kind of low-key, low-impact tourism. His opus — America's best-selling budget guidebook — is called Europe Through the Back Door (Avalon Travel Publishing). But it hasn't escaped his attention that his readers, as they follow his "back door" passages into the heart of European culture, are now more likely to find each other. "Sure, there are places like Gimmelwald, or Cinque Terre in Italy, that I've promoted heavily and really had an impact on," Steves says from a hotel in Nice, where he is researching his next book. But he is cheerily unrepentant. "They're now touristy, admittedly. And it's my fault, admittedly. But when I get back there, I check in with the locals and the tourists, and everybody's happy. The locals might be renting rooms and cooking nice meals instead of making wine — but they're also making money."
With European tourism expected to be down by as much as 20% this summer because of SARS and terror fears, many destinations would no doubt wish for a bit more of the Steves effect. But like Peter Mayle in Provence, the key to his appeal is in selecting places that don't feel touristy — or at least didn't before he got there. Gimmelwald was one of Switzerland's poorest places until Steves wandered in and put it in his first book in 1980. Although residents still practice the subsistence dairy farming that maintained the village for generations, almost all now moonlight as innkeepers. "My initial concern was that we would start to feel like strangers in our own village," says an elderly farmer named Bruno. "But luckily that didn't happen."
The tourism is more bearable, and the welcome warmer, because Steves' culturally sensitive ethos seems to rub off on his devoted followers. "The locals are not hostile — yet," says Robert Smith, a 39-year-old antiques dealer from New Orleans, now on his eighth visit to Gimmelwald after seeing it on Steves' TV show. "But I'm always aware that this is a conservative farming community, and I'm very careful not to upset anyone." That's not the stereotypical American attitude, but it is representative of Steves' legions. "I think too much noise has been made about Gimmelwald," says Petra Brunner, who runs the Mountain Hostel, and estimates that Rick Steves is responsible for 95% of her business. "But all my lodgers have been well behaved, and they do help families make extra money by buying local produce, so it has been good."
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Steves considers that a victory, because it shows that his army of readers is absorbing his lessons. Even if the price is an "unspoiled" village where tourists outnumber locals two to one, Steves claims that's an important step toward breaking down transatlantic stereotypes. "I'm trying not to sound like an evangelist," says Steves, as he describes what he sees as "a mission to help Americans broaden their perspective through travel — to feel more like part of the family of nations." But of course he does often sound like an evangelist, complete with mantras that trip from his followers' tongues: "Be fanatically positive and militantly optimistic. If something's not to your liking, change your liking."
Europe is clearly to his readers' liking. While American travel to most Continental destinations has plunged, Steves' company is having a record year, with more than 5,000 people booking for the first time. "My job is to help a lot of people enjoy a lot of culture. I teach mainstream America how to overcome their fears and apprehensions and immerse themselves in a foreign country," he says. As for the foreign countries, being immersed in a sea of friendly, philosophical American tourists might help them overcome some fears and apprehensions of their own.
- BLAINE GRETEMAN
- Rick Steves spots tomorrow's tourist havens