Travel expert Rick Steves, at age 70, continues to travel economically and advocates for immersive cultural experiences over typical tourism, emphasizing the importance of travel for broadening perspectives and fostering global understanding.
Rick Steves has built a travel empire, but he still only flies economy and brings a single carry-on.
At 70, it’s a formula he hasn’t outgrown — and one that still fuels him. He’s about to head off on a 50-day excursion to Europe, where he’ll update some of his famous travel guides, and he’s practically buzzing thinking about it.
“It's like breathing straight oxygen,” he says. “I don’t need to do this” — with a team now running hisSteves has been traveling for more than 50 years. The new paperback edition of revisits a pivotal trip he took in his 20s, the beginning of a mindset that hasn’t changed much since. That perspective has taken on new meaning in recent years.
Steves was“It’s a beautiful wake-up call to how wonderful life is — and that we are mortal,” he says.
“Every day is a blessing. ”Steves says he tells his team in Edmonds, Wash. , that their mission is to “equip and inspire Americans to venture beyond Orlando. ” He’s not knocking theme park trips and beach vacations — just encouraging people to “raise the bar and travel in a way that’s transformational,” and makes them “better citizens of the planet.
”For him, travel is about getting out of your comfort zone, not checking off destinations from a bucket list.
“Don’t tell me how educated you are. Tell me how much you’ve traveled,” Steves says.
“How many preconceptions have you challenged? How many times has your ethnocentrism been humbled? Culture shock is something not to avoid, but to embrace. ”“We live in a time in our country when we are afraid, and there are powerful forces that capitalize on that fear.
They want us to build walls. ” Steves believes travel opens the door to the opposite, pushing people to engage with different cultures.
“It's so clear to me as a traveler that if you want to be safe … if you want to have a good world for your children, you can't wall yourself out from the other 96% of humanity,” he says. “You've got to get out there and get to know what you might think is the enemy. Bridges make us safe, not walls. That's not political.
That's just common sense. ”Steves encourages his guides to talk about politics and religion, not avoid them.
“It’d be a shame for somebody to go to Europe and not take home any understanding of the lessons people have learned from the hard knocks of history,” Steves says. That approach shapes the kind of travelers his tours attract — people willing to step outside their comfort zones and connect with others.
Still in motionHe no longer leads tours himself — “I’ve got 200 European guides who do it much better than I ever could” — but he says he’s learned a lot from his tourists over 25 years. For instance: “Age only matters if you're a cheese. ”“I’m curious, I’m , I’m meeting people,” he says.
“My cells feel like we’re not hibernating — we’re out there surviving. ... As long as I’m physically able to do this, I can’t imagine anything more worth getting out of bed for. ”That outlook was only reinforced when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in August 2024.
He was diagnosed after a“I was able to catch it before it metastasized,” he says.
“I opted just to have the whole thing taken out,” undergoing a prostatectomy that October. Steves is now cancer-free and undergoes quarterly checkups.
“I’ve got more energy since my cancer, because I’m embracing every day,” he says. “I find joy in contributing and learning. ”I'm down one organ — packing lighter than ever.
“I've had cancer,” he says. “I'm in the brotherhood of prostate cancer survivors — just like a lot of women are in the sisterhood of breast cancer survivors — and we need to be open about it. If I hid that, I'd lose the opportunity to remind other men … to get their blood checked. ”As technology changes the way we do, well, everything, Steves is not resistant to embracing new tools.
He’s used AI to help navigate logistics and unexpected challenges — like a landslide in the Dolomites.
“I think it's great,” he says. “When I started, there wasn’t enough information,” he says. “Now, there’s too much. It needs to be curated.
” He’s wary of influencers who have traveled somewhere “once … and know how to be cool online. ” He prefers getting advice from people who’ve “dedicated their life to teaching this culture. ” Plenty of travelers will keep following selfie sticks, “and that’s fine, it’s fun,” he says. But they’ll be “complaining about high prices and crowds.
” His travelers have “magic experiences. ”If you buy something through a link in this article, we may earn commission.
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