From our friend in travel Rick Steves.
I met Rick Steves the first time in Rothenburg ob der Tauber in the summer of 2008. I have subsequently had two more meetings out on the road while he was updating his popular guidebooks.
An Open Letter from an American-Owned Tour Company to our Canadian Travel Buddies
Recently, we’ve heard from a few of our longstanding Canadian customers who signed up for a 2025 Rick Steves tour but are now considering canceling. They still love our style of travel, but they’re struggling to reconcile doing business with an American company.
One customer wrote: “As Canadians, we now are in new and unexpected territory. Your president has created a very hostile environment with his bullying and threats against Canada. In a unified effort to fight back and stand up, we, like most Canadians, are not buying American products, not travelling to the USA, and attempting not to support the USA in any way within our power. We feel that the people who were once our friends are now just our neighbours, and not always the pleasant ones they once were.”
I’d like to make our thoughts on this clear to all: Canada, we hear you. We respect and share your concerns.
Like you, I am alarmed at the antagonistic stance the new US president is taking toward most of the rest of the world (and at his strange choice of new “friends.”) And I find his recent words and deeds against Canada particularly reprehensible: personal insults against your prime minister, persistent threats to make Canada “the 51st state,” and a costly trade war that few people on either side of the border want.
For decades, we at Rick Steves’ Europe have striven to create people-to-people connections and intercultural understanding by teaching our mostly American customers how to travel thoughtfully, be good global citizens, and get along better with the other 96 percent of humanity. If this is “political,” then we are very much politically aligned with our neighbors to the north — and I am personally aligned with you, as well. My grandparents homesteaded in Edmonton, Alberta, and my mother grew up in Vancouver, BC. I enjoy that I am often mistaken for being Canadian. While it could be because of my accent (my mom taught me how to talk), I like to think it’s because of my decency.
When I speak to Canadian audiences (which I often do during public television pledge drives, as 90 percent of Canadians enjoy access to PBS broadcasts and are generous and much-appreciated supporters of public television stations in border cities like Seattle, Spokane, Detroit, and Buffalo), I like to explain how my TV shows are a “Trojan horse” injecting Canadian values south of the border. (And I’ve long not-so-jokingly framed this as an extra bonus gift to Canadians considering a donation to PBS.)
My colleagues and I completely understand and deeply respect the movement across Canada to think twice about doing business with the United States. (Frankly, if we were in your shoes, many of us would join in your principled boycott.) At the same time, we believe it’s important to distinguish between individual citizens (and organizations) and their country of origin. Traveling through Europe during good times and bad, we’ve been impressed and inspired by how Europeans, by and large, welcome and respect each individual traveler as just that — an individual — rather than painting us all with one broad brush.
We recognize that you make a political statement in how you spend your dollars. It may help to consider that the lion’s share of what you spend on a Rick Steves tour will ultimately end up in the hands of our European friends and partners — tour guides, bus drivers, hoteliers, restauranteurs, and other small-business owners. We also proudly and generously use much of our profit to support ongoing philanthropic efforts that we believe reflect Canadian values: from addressing global climate change through climate-smart initiatives; to funding Bread for the World and other organizations that fight hunger around the globe; to supporting organizations such as the ACLU, which strives to keep the US government honest and accountable; to helping poor and disadvantaged young Americans enjoy educational travel abroad. (Sadly, nearly all the causes we support as part of our mission are in the cross-hairs of our new president.)
With all of this taken into consideration, if you feel strongly that, in good conscience, you can’t continue to do business with a company that’s based in the United States, we regretfully but respectfully accept that decision. Godspeed, keep on travelin’… and we hope our paths cross again when things get better.
But if you’re looking for a reason to continue doing business with Rick Steves’ Europe, let me offer this reassurance: While we, like you, are doing everything we can to push back against the dangerous and reckless actions of the US president, we also remain fully committed to our mission of teaching good travel, fostering people-to-people connections, and striving to create better citizens of the world… one trip at a time. If that’s the version of “American values” that you support, we’d love for you to join us — and I believe you’ll find that the vast majority of your fellow tour members, regardless of nationality, share your values.
That said, our country is politically diverse — as are the people who join our tours. We believe in the “dual narrative” approach to understanding walls (both physical and metaphorical) that we encounter in our travels. Whether you’re in Belfast or Jerusalem (or navigating the divide between San Francisco and Abilene), you don’t know a wall until you’ve talked with people on both sides of it. And in that spirit, we welcome all travelers on our buses. We believe that by leaving home and then, together, looking back at it from afar, we learn more about it and each other. And by broadening our perspectives through shared travel experiences, we grow closer. (I think of it like an Impressionist canvas: To paint a vibrant purple, Monet wouldn’t mix blue and red on his palette. In order for his art to take on a special vibrancy, he’d dab the two different colors side by side, knowing they’d “mix” in the eyes of the viewer.)
Canada has always been the best neighbor the US could ask for. And even during this scary time, when our government is actively undermining the sovereignty of yours, we believe that as individuals, we can still be friends. In fact, that person-to-person friendship and solidarity has never been more important. We as a company — and I as an individual citizen — are doing everything in our power to bring civility and decency back to our nation…and we welcome Canadians to join us on tour as we explore Europe together.
-Rick Steves