owner of travel guru

• Meet the new generation of travel guru: Andy Steves

Edmonds travel guru Rick Steves’ son, Andy Steves, learned about traveling overseas when other kids were in preschool. Now, 29, he’s founded his own travel company and has, not too surprisingly, written a guidebook.

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Fatherhood’s a long journey, and if you’re travel expert Rick Steves, 61, father of Andy Steves, 29, there’s not always time for rest stops.

Throughout his childhood, Andy recalls, he, his sister and their mother would join his father in Europe every summer while the elder Steves did research and taped TV shows for his burgeoning travel-guide business. There wasn’t a lot of R&R.

“When Rick Steves is in Europe, it’s always a business trip — it’s never vacation,” Andy says bluntly.

AUTHORS’ APPEARANCE

Andy steves in discussion with rick steves.

Andy Steves will discuss and sign “Andy Steves’ Europe: City Hopping on a Budget” at 6 p.m. Monday, June 20, at Seattle’s University Book Store, 4326 University Way N.E.; ( bookstore.washington.edu/)

What was it like for the kids in those days when Dad was laser-focused on building his brand?

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“It was intense. We’d have our daily allowance to get a gelato or something. We’d have our frustrations — walking past the camera 10 times to get it right for a shoot.”

But that all became routine, Andy says, and if imitation is in fact flattery, any childhood resentment seems washed away: Just in time for Father’s Day 2016, the younger Steves is doing a major “like father, like son” act, publishing “Andy Steves’ Europe,” his first travel guidebook .

The pair will do a joint appearance and Andy will sign books at 6 p.m. Monday, June 20, at Seattle’s University Book Store, 4326 University Way N.E.

Unless you’ve lived under a rock for 35 years, you’ll know that Rick Steves is generally considered the European travel guru (even he calls himself that in conversation). From self-publishing his first “Europe Through the Back Door” travel guide in 1980 and leading trips through the University of Washington’s Experimental College, he’s built a little empire, with tours, best-selling guidebooks, and travel wisdom doled out through a syndicated newspaper column and nationwide programs on public TV and radio. He has always emphasized traveling light and getting to know local culture.

It’s made him a millionaire, all based from his hometown, the Seattle suburb of Edmonds, where father and son sat this week in the head office of Rick Steves’ Europe and pondered their travels through life together.

From his earliest days, “I have vague memories of running around castles — of playing hide-and-seek in castles built by Mad King Ludwig,” Andy says.

As a dad, Rick aimed to engender independence and travel savvy in his son as he grew up. Sometimes it would be a sort of trial by fire.

“In Paris, he’d put me on the next Metro (subway) car and tell me where to transfer and where to get off — and hopefully he was watching out for me,” Andy recollects.

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After graduating from Lynnwood’s Meadowdale High School, Andy backpacked around Europe with a school buddy. As Rick recollects in a foreword penned for his son’s guidebook, he had primed Andy with a list of “must-see” museums, castles and galleries.

“When he came home he triumphantly declared that he had skipped most of those conventional sights and, instead, made friends in each country,” Rick recalls.

That kind of person-to-person connecting is what “carbonates” travel, and it’s what his son is so good at, Rick says.

While Andy attended the University of Notre Dame (studying industrial design, with a minor in Italian language and literature), a foreign-study term in Italy opened his eyes to a market for the kind of help his father offers travelers — but zeroed in on college students and technology-driven millennials.

Out of school in 2010, Andy founded his own business, Weekend Student Adventures , for the backpacker crowd that pops between European capitals on $50 budget flights.

The guidebook is an outgrowth of that, as he now divides his time between Prague and Seattle.

Rick Steves say he’s not proud he didn’t make more time for family vacations in earlier days. Nowadays, he takes his grown kids on an annual trip together — somewhere distinctly not Europe. (He and his wife divorced in 2009.)

Meanwhile, Andy seems laser-focused on building his own travel business.

“Your mom and sister would say we’re disgustingly similar,” Rick says to his son.

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Who owns who?

Many people here use third party websites to purchase travel. I thought you might be interested to know who owns who.....

The first travel group of companies is the Expedia Group. This company has two divisions. The first includes:

Travelocity

Cheap tickets

Carrentals.com

HomeAway.com

The second comes under the TripAdvisor banner. These include:

TripAdvisor

Airfarewatchdog

Cruisecritic

SmarterTraveler

There are more subsidiaries but I just posted the ones I've seen on this board.

The next group of travel companies is Bookings Holdings. This includes:

Booking.com

Cheap Flights

Rentalcars.com

Both of these holding companies are publicly traded in case you want to buy stock in them.

I have read that cruise critic and TripAdvisor are owned by the same company.

They are and are listed above.

Do you want to add Homeaway to the Expedia umbrella?

I added it. I didn't list every subsidiary just those that seem popular here.

Thanks Frank. Interesting.

Reminds me of a portion of the brilliant Paddy Chayefsky written dialogue in the film Network when Ned Beatty’s character is lecturing Peter Finch’s Howard Beale.....

“ You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immense, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.

It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?”

In essence governments don’t rule the world, corporations do.

Thanks Frank II. I appreciate that North Americans may recognize VRBO (which is under the HomeAway umbrella if you read their website) more frequently, but HomeAway comes up in Europe, thus the request. And of course, due to some of the posts here of HomeAway/VRBO scams.

I am too lazy to check this morning, but doesn't TripAdvisor sometimes send you to Booking.com for a hotel reservation? That would be crossing the corporate line. Not that it matters, just curious.

@Stan, TripAdvisor lists 'their' price and the price of other 3rd parts - I assume hoping to show theirs is a competitive or better price.

Great post!! Thanks Frank.

OK, I got a sudden burst of energy and went to TripAdvisor website. Did a quick Hotel search for New York City, and for the first hotel on the list, the link to book goes to Booking.com. Click on that and a transition page pops up that says "we are connecting you now to our partner's website" with both TripAdvisor and Booking.com logos.

Not a big deal or important at all, but if they are owned by different companies, its collusion.

It's not "Carrental.com" - it's CarRental s .com

But...the more important issue is "why should anyone care who owns what?" I think the practical implications for travel are more important for people on this forum who are unfamiliar with third parties, how they work, and are largely biased against them. Giving some concrete examples would help.

Agnes, you're right of course - its not important. But some of us like to take a peak behind the curtain and see how things work. There are a lot of people who think the internet and such websites are impartial sources of information. But the ownership connections make it at least suspect that there's sponsoring or prioritizing of sister businesses.

Hey Traveling-and-Consuming Folks:

There is a lot of middle ground between "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" and "It's all a scam!"

“..... tipple digit ....”

Is that when you stick your finger in the rum and coke?

That's quite a list! Thanks for posting. At least I now know who to blame for those dreadfully annoying Trivago commercials.

Of the firms listed, I do use Seat Guru, Gate Guru and Trip Advisor, but none of the others.

One minor correction.... TravelPod discontinued operations a few years ago and no longer exists.

I removed travelpod and gateguru since both no longer exist but added airfarewatchdog.

I wasn't aware that Gate Guru had also been shut down. I guess I can delete the App.

Do you have a source for your strong statements, Doug?

A lot like banks, buy your competitors.

A very helpful thread, Frank II, thank you!

This topic has been automatically closed due to a period of inactivity.

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Think guidebooks are out of style? This American travel guru will convince you otherwise

“Rick Steves is kind of like the Bob Ross of travel,” Ryan Howe tells me. 

A 45-year-old strategic business coach from Custer, Michigan – population 297 – Howe grew up amongst farmland in his poverty-stricken village. Public Broadcasting Television (PBS) – America’s free-access TV channel where Ross debuted his Joy of Painting in 1983 and Steves’ his Travels in Europe with Rick Steves in 1991 – was his only means of escape. 

“There’s no way to construe anything about what [Rick] does other than that it’s from a good place of wholesomeness. When I was stationed in Japan in 2002 with the Air Force and was to move to Pisa, Italy , I immediately went to my library on base to ask how to order Rick’s Italy guidebook from PBS. Three weeks later, I got it.”

Steves, 68, is the owner and founder of Rick Steves’ Europe, a small-group tour operator. He currently has 81 books and nine planning maps in print. No less than five of the top 10 travel books on Bookscan – which includes guides, memoirs and other books related to travel – are Steves’ books. He is also a television and radio host, activist, and beloved by many Americans who grew up on his shows, his books, and the calming voice he’s known for. 

“His tone is very soothing,” says Vanessa Gordon, 34, CEO and publisher of a local Long Island magazine who started reading Steves’ guidebooks in the late 1990s and credits her desire to travel with those hours spent perusing his pages.He oozes ‘dad vibes’, is what we’re saying. 

Born and raised north of Seattle, Washington, in Edmonds, Steves’s first trip to Europe was in 1969 with his parents when he was 14. He scribbled about what he saw and experienced on the back of postcards, and when he returned to Europe sans parents four years later, he came equipped with journals. Writing down all he learned came as naturally to him as posting on Instagram does to today’s young travellers. 

In his 20s, Steves began teaching travel through a non-credited student-run arm of his alma mater, University of Washington, and a decade after that first trip, he self-published Europe Through the Back Door , his first European guidebook.

Tamar Marder, stay at home mum and blogger at World by Weekend who grew up in northern California first remembers hearing about Steves from her parents when she was 12. They took her on a trip to Italy and used Rick Steves’ Italy . Since then, Marder has used his guidebooks to plan many trips across Europe. 

A couple of years ago, while on a Sicilian Christmas holiday with her family, she ended up at the kitchen table of Mariarita, a fourth-generation vintner. After the scheduled tour that they had booked ended, Mariarita invited them into her home, and they sat, surrounded by photos of her family, a Christmas tree alight with presents piled underneath.

“We chatted about life in Sicily, the wine business, and the local products she used to prepare the meal while my children crawled around under the table,” says Marder. “These are the types of experiences that Rick Steves promotes – cultural exchanges and interactions with locals. Because while travel is about seeing the sights and learning the history, it’s also about meeting people and learning about different ways of life around the world. I may forget what year the Normans conquered Sicily or who built the churches in Palermo, but I will remember sitting at Mariarita’s table, drinking wine, and eating delicious food.”

For as long as Steves has been a public figure, he’s been a supporter of advocacy for communities and organisations that cross cultural divides – his company donates to climate-smart nonprofits and Bread for the World, a Christian group working to end world hunger. 

He’s also helped the fight to legalise marijuana across the US and has donated £7.5 million for two community centres in his hometown and a 24-unit apartment building for homeless women and their children with the local YWCA.

Though Steves’ fans tend to skew North American and in the 40-plus range, folks from further afield and a younger subset of travellers have fallen in love with his easy-going vibe.

“I resonate with the emphasis he places on flexibility,” 29-year-old Rocky Trifari from New Jersey who runs The Rocky Safari Guide, tells me. “It’s at the core of his travel philosophy and it’s at the centre of mine as well. Flexibility is a big factor that has allowed me to adopt long-term travel as a lifestyle while working as a digital nomad.”

Trifari learned of Steves from an Australian couple he met in Zadar, Croatia five years ago. But he says that Steves’ name pops up in more conversations than he can count on his travels across the world.

Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, but based in Madrid for the past decade, Claire Riley, owner of luxury travel company Duende Travels, says she knows plenty of millennial-aged people who always travel with Steves books as their guide: “I think Rick Steves appeals to Americans [because] he seems so relatable and normal; his show airs on public television, so almost everyone has access to [him]. He makes travel so accessible to everyone [and] has options for more budget-minded people, options for people who want to splurge, and everything in between. There’s no gatekeeping from Rick Steves.”

It’s clear that Steves has had an influence over multiple generations of US travellers, and will continue to do so because of his affable demeanour and prolific publishing. In fact, just the other day, my mother told me she found a Rick Steves France guidebook in a second-hand shop and picked it up for my sister who’s travelling to the country next month. It seems that Steves is always in the right place at the right time.

Are you a Rick Steves fan? Share your thoughts in the comments below

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Twenty fantastic freelance years went by working with media clients like The Telegraph and Take A Break magazine and, in addition, managing complex, multi-crew filming projects for Tourist Board clients.

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Karnail Singh is the owner of Go Travel Guru, a travel company that provides a wide range of services to travelers in the Indian cities of Chandigarh, Ropar, Delhi, and Himachal Pradesh.

The company, which was founded by Singh in 2022, has quickly become one of the most popular travel agencies in the region. Go Travel Guru is known for its exceptional customer service and personalized attention to each and every client. The company’s staff is highly trained and experienced, and they are always ready to go the extra mile to ensure that their clients have a comfortable and enjoyable travel experience.

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TV broadcasting in the trains of the Moscow Metro

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Tomsk, Russia, January 23, 2020. The Elecard company took part in the large-scale project on content preparation and broadcasting of 12 channels in the Moscow underground trains.

The Moscow Metro is the backbone of the Moscow transport system. It consists of 15 lines and 269 stations, on which more than 12 thousand trains are passed daily. There are 6200 video screens installed in the subway cars, which broadcast TV channels, information videos, and commercials. The monitors are designed for a large audience: more than 7 million people use the metro every day.

Elecard, SoftLab-NSK, and Stream Labs developed and implemented the hardware and software complex for preparation, broadcasting, and monitoring of TV channels in metro trains of 12 lines. This solution is based on the transcoder Elecard CodecWorks and high-density servers. CodecWorks supports H.265/HEVC, which is especially important in this project, as the communication bandwidth in the rolling stock is limited. HEVC allows broadcasting video of higher quality due to a higher degree of compression, as opposed to the AVC format. The solution guarantees stable broadcasting, as it includes redundancy of all system components. If an error occurs, the schema will automatically switch to the reserve source, and viewers will not notice a failure.

The Stream Labs provided the solution for the head-end station monitoring. The technologies of the SoftLab-NSK were used to implement the playout system. The solution supports targeted advertising adjusted for the content availability and duration. A playlist with a specific set of informational videos and commercials is prepared for each subway line. The system is integrated with external systems of advertising content delivery.

“ Metropolitan is a unique facility that has its own specifics in terms of standards and operation. It is important to understand and consider this in our work. We provided exclusive technical support during testing and implementation of the solution ," said Nikolay Milovanov, Elecard CEO.

" We came up with the task to implement broadcasting of media content with targeted advertising in Moscow Metro. We turned to Elecard with request to provide a high-quality software solution. The implemented solution allows us to broadcast not only commercials but also sports ans cultural events. On behalf of the company I would like to express my gratitude to Elecard employees for the project implementation and professional support at all stages of the system integration ," comments Maxim Shemegon, Development Director of the Moscow Metro State Unitary Enterprise.

Elecard CodecWorks is a professional software solution for real-time decoding, encoding, and transcoding into MPEG-2/AVC/HEVC with up to 16K resolution supporting multi-screen encoding and HLS/MPEG-DASH adaptive streaming technologies. CodecWorks has passed through comprehensive testing and guarantees high performance and continuous content delivery suitable for projects of any scale and complexity.

About Elecard Elecard provides software products for encoding, decoding, processing, receiving, and transmission of video and audio data in different formats (H.265/HEVC, H.264/AVC, MPEG-4, MPEG-2). Elecard is based in the United States, Canada, Russia, and Vietnam. For more information, please visit www.elecard.com. The company offers a wide range of reference designs for professional digital TV broadcasting market, which includes streaming, transcoding, video-on-demand servers, professional software products, and software development kits. Elecard is based in the United States, Russia, and Vietnam. For more information, please visit www.elecard.com.

Contacts: Tel.: +7 (3822) 488-585 [email protected]

About the Moscow Metro The Moscow Metro State Unitary Enterprise is an organization that provides rail transportation services for passengers in Moscow. It includes the Moscow Metro and the monorail. The Moscow Metro is the basis of the Moscow transport system, which consists of 15 lines and 269 stations.

Contacts: Tel.: +7 (495) 539-54-54

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