This guy is great....when I travelled through Europe on my motorcycle, I carried the first edition of his book. I love how he has made a success out of his love of travel, and pulls no punches with his opinions, he'd make a great NNBM barmate...
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Outspoken travel guru rooted in Edmonds
By DAN RICHMAN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
EDMONDS -- Join travel guru Rick Steves as he walks to get coffee in this picturesque waterfront
city, and his involvement with his hometown quickly becomes clear.
"Hi, Rick!" call out at least six passers-by, some from across the street or f rom passing cars. He
initiates an equal number of conversations, sometimes stopping for longer chats. Everyone he sees
gets a big smile and a hello.
Steves, 49, makes his living writing about traveling, spending about a third of the year abroad. But
this worldly Europhile bases his business and his home life in Edmonds, a city of 40,000 located
about 15 miles north of Seattle. He revels in being a small-town guy.
The junior high school he attended is visible through the huge windows of his corner office
downtown on Fourth Street. That brick building, which houses his 20,000-square-foot retail space
and headquarters, is the third one the business has occupied -- all on the same street.
"I really love my town," Steves said. "When you're coming home to Puget Sound, you realize
you've got a lot. ... I've never thought about living elsewhere."
Steves has had a major impact both economically and culturally on Edmonds. With his outspoken
manner and bold stance on some touchy issues -- such as legali zing marijuana and whether to fly
the American flag -- he has been both praised and criticized.
But he is never ignored.
National stature
Steves is probably the bes t-known travel promoter in this country, with an established TV show on
PBS, a radio show that recently debuted on National Public Radio affiliate KUOW (94.9 FM) in
Seattle, and a popular series of phrasebooks and guidebooks. His company -- Rick Steves' Europe
Through the Back Door Inc. -- is Edmonds' largest downtown business, with 60 employees and
record revenue of about $20 million last year.
Despite the pressure of running that
business, he takes his time while
returning to his office with coffee.
"I run all day long. On this walk, I
like to savor my town," he said,
recounting his life in Edmonds as
he and a visitor stroll.
About 30 years ago, when he was
giving piano lessons to pay for his
first trips to Europe, his father, a
piano importer, gave him studio
space to work from. Now his dad
maintains a little piano shop in the
building's basement.
He describes himself as a Christian
and is an active member of nearby
Trinity Lutheran Church. He got
undergrad degrees in both business
and history at the U niversity of Washington, and now lives in north Edmonds with his wife and
two children. He sometimes walks the two miles to work down the Burlington Northern Santa Fe
railroad tracks.
In h is "Europe Through the Back Door," now in its 23rd edition, Steves describes the ideal
traveler's attitude as "relentlessly optimistic." By living that attitude, and by working hard in a field
he loves, Steves has made his mark on Edmonds, just as he has on the American tourism industry.
'Tremendous local impact'
"Rick Steves is a constant, a homegrown businessman who started a business here and has kept it
here," said Chris Guitton, executive director of the Greater Edmonds Chamber of Commerce. "We
know he has a tremendous positive impact on our local economy."
In the long term, Europe Through the Ba ck Door's draw means exposure for Edmonds, bringing
first-time visitors who may return. More immediately, it swells business for about 30 percent of
Edmonds' shops, hotels and restaurants, and for the city's con ference center, performing arts center
and movie theatre, said Guitton.
On any given day, Steves' business can bring 3,000 well-heeled visitors to town. His twice-yearly
travel seminars ea ch can attract 6,000 people over a weekend. Aside from several annual holidays
and festivals, those are the largest crowds to assemble in the city.
"Our business is about three times what it is usually during t he seminars," said Marlaine Berentson,
a waitress at the nearby Chanterelle restaurant. "We put in extra servers and stock up on
everything."
Steves puts some of his money back into the co mmunity in creative ways. He recently spent $1.3
million for a 24-unit apartment building in Lynnwood, which he's allowing that city's Pathways for
Women YWCA to use at no cost for 15 years to house single mothe rs and their children.
Aside from his business' tangible contributions to the area -- charity, taxes, employee salaries --
"you also have an impact just by changing the personality of the way a community thinks," Steves
said.
Specifically, after he holds a seminar, "everybody's wandering around this town buzzing about the
rest of the world," he said. "Here we are in little Edmonds, and this is a springboard for a better
understanding of the world."
Competitors complain
The benefits Steves confers on the area don't make everyone his fan. Reactions among nearby
travel businesses, some of which compete with his own, range from tepid to testy.
"We benefit a little from Rick Steves, because sometimes the people who come to his seminars will
see our office and possibly buy air tickets for his tours," said Susie Main, operations manager at
Nordic Travel Tours in Edmonds.
Other local travel businesses say that while Steves has expanded the number of people going
abroad, they don't benefit, because Steves-style travelers tend to buy their own tickets online and
generally make their own way.
"I think he stirs up a lot of interest, and he's a very well-respected m ember of the travel community,
but we're in two different worlds," said Richard Hertzog, owner of Carlson Wagonlit Travel in
Lynnwood.
Steves' new radio show has antagonized some travel-industry competitors, both locally and
elsewhere. They say it violates NPR's code of ethics, because it lets him use a publicly funded
outlet to promote his own business.
Matthew Brumley, a former Steves employee who left to found Earthbound Expeditions Inc. on
Bainbridge Island, recently began an e-mail campaign enlisting other tour and travel agencies in a
protest against KUOW.
"Rick Steves Inc., a for-profit tour company, is being given the unfair advantage of having a
nationally aired program to use as a forum for advertising his company, tours and products," his
e-mail complain s.
Petra Rousu, owner of Edmonds' Savvy Traveler tour business and travel-gear store, agrees, as
does Clair Nolan, owner of Alki Tours in West Seattle.
KUOW program director Jeff Hansen s aid his station isn't bound by NPR's code of ethics, but
even if it were, "we don't see a problem with his program.... As far as I can tell, his reputation for
high-quality public broadcasting is impeccable," he said.
Steves attributes the flap mainly to jealousy.
"I think it just embarrasses Matthew to send out that letter to a lot of people, because for one thing,
if anybody listens to my show, they would not find it to be a conspiracy against competition but a
celebration of travel," he said.
"And I don't think anybody can quite pull it off like me," he added with a grin, " 'cause I'm pretty
talented about that."
There's no question Steves' talents wield a strong influence on the travel industry nationwide.
His guide to Italy was the best-selling guidebook in the U.S. last year. H is phrase books outsell
Berlitz's in bookstores. And both here and abroad, he's often recognized and accosted by
autograph-seekers.
"He must be responsible for an uptick in European travel," said David Tykol, editor of International
Travel News, a monthly magazine reaching 43,000 travelers. "I think he has probably made people
take a chance and go it on their own, rather than just going with a tour group."
Added Roger Dow, chief executive of the Travel Industry Association of America, "If we had a
Rick Steves in Germany or England doing for the U.S. what Steves does for Europe, it would
increase tourism to this country big-time."
Steves' knack for popularizing European travel -- especially among older travelers who might
otherwise be sitting in their recliners -- has made him wealthy. S teves said he's worth "millions --
several millions," declining to elaborate.
Unconventional views
Steves is conventional in appearance, but far from it in some of his attitudes and belie fs.
The man who got famous advising tourists to seek the "back door" into Europe -- in part by sniffing
out family-owned lodging and restaurants -- himself prefers a chain coffee shop.
"T he little place across the street always tries to lure me in, but I go to Tully's," he said. "I do like
to patronize small businesses, but Tully's coffee is better. That's just the way it is."
Despite his stature in Edmonds, he doesn't belong to the city's Rotary Club or its chamber of
commerce.
He unabashedly both smokes marijuana and backs efforts to legalize it -- a stance that makes some
of his employees nervous about the future of his business.
"Here in America, people say it's so courageous for me to say it's not right to arrest mature adult
users of marijuana," he said, sighing. "It's a big lie in our society. It's a huge lie."
His business flies the blue and gold European Union flag, not the Stars and Stripes. That choice
makes a statement about America's excessive dominance abroad, while countering a national
tendency toward conspicuous patriotism, he said.
Steves once defied the local Lions Club and personally removed 50 American flags from the
business district, put up by the club a few weeks earlier in a show of support when the war in Iraq
began.
That caused a stir, and a number of businesses protested. But Steves is unrepentant.
"It's patriotic of me to defend my (American) flag that way. There's a third of the people in this
community that disagreed with the war, and they were too afraid to say anything because they'd
lose business," he said.
Steves knows he can get under the skin of some people in his community. But that doesn't worry
him. In fact, he enjoys "politically afflicting the comfortable."
What he does worry about is that failing to speak out against what he calls "the tyranny of the
majority" -- as he did with the Lions Club's flag display -- can gradually lead to repression, even if
it's self-imposed.
He tells of talking with Germans who recall the ascendancy of Hitler and how insidiously that
changed their lives, even in the way they greeted one another.
Traditionally, "they would say 'Grüss Gott' or 'Guten Tag.' Then slowly they had to say, 'Sieg
Heil!' I don't want that around here."
So taking down the flags, he said, was "just my little way of challenging Edmonds to do better."
IN HIS OWN WORDS
On marijuana: "I could take or leave marijuana myself. I know one thing: It's not addictive. I
love it, but I smoke it less than I talk it."
On overexposing parts of Europe: "Yeah, yeah. It's true. ... I'm sort of like the whaler who
screams, 'Quick, harpoon it, before it's extinct!' Now, having said that, I'm not stupid. If there's a
fragile little bit of something hiding out in some corner, I'm not going to send everybody there to
trample it and kill it."
On revelations while traveling: "I was in a park in Oslo, with my parents doting over me -- a
very self-centered little kid -- and I loo ked around and I saw other parents loving their children as
much as my parents loved me. ... It lets you know that struggles in Latvia, Morocco and Nicaragua
are real struggles."
On whethe r to enter politics: "I probably do (have the right personality for politics). But in
our political situation, I wouldn't get into it. ... You could give 10 years of your life to something,
and then somebody els e could come in and, based on some perversion of patriotism or abuse of
fear, they could wipe out everything you accomplished."
On investing and charity: "OK, I make more money than I can consume. What am I going to
do with it? If I consume more, it just makes me fat and uncomfortable. But if someone else can
consume for me, it actually turns me on."
On being influential: "For some reason, when people describe me, people say 'guru.' I think
that's funny! If I say it's better to wear black underwear, they probably would. It's a scary
responsibility."
On his occupation: "I love to sell guidebooks. When I cross a border, they say, 'What's your
occupation?' I say 'teacher.' I'm a teacher, and my students are people with my guidebooks." |
