Washington Post did a profile of Rick Steves recently at his home in Edmonds, WA.

He presides over a private business with $120 million a year in revenues. Yet:

I wouldn't imagine too many FTers rely on Steves' travel advice or only on his travel advice either.

​​​​​​​He'd accumulate a ton of miles ...

Mrs767 and I found the article very interesting

his early “Europe Through the Back Door” book/s made a huge splash, and contained a wealth of information that was both useful and well-presented … from our perspective, they’re a lot more objective than many of the “granola/hippie” guides; he scarcely mentions high-end stuff, but I don’t think he dismisses anyone who prefers lie-flats and 4- or 5-star service establishments either

he’s more recently done a handful of tv productions in a similar style

I disagree with this. Once people realise that miles/points are not a sign of loyalty from the airlines, then you can collect freely. Collect them if they're available, "oh well" if they're not. It's all based on human greed (to some degree). Spending all your time trying to maximize the value of your points just ruins people's lives.

I recently saw a report on where people were maximizing their points they collect. If you spend all this time looking for the signs so you can maximize your points, you're going to miss the trip. If you spend all the time tracking points with spreadsheets trying to collect every point possible, when are you going to enjoy life? If you enjoy doing this kind of stuff, go for it. But for most people, you look a little crazy. A case in point... one of my friends collects points from Canada's biggest grocers. He also has his brother collect points for him. I think he has over 1mil points right now. He doesn't spend any of them (despite my warning him that if they devalue the points, he's going to lose out big). But that's how he enjoys himself (and doesn't benefit from it)

Better off enjoying your life and if you can supplement it with a few extra trips or benefits somewhere, then all the better.

I have an uncle who has always been similarly austere wrt airplane tickets (well, he does grab business when he perceives the price differential as commensurate with his satisfaction differential), but he's participated in loyalty programs since their inception.

A lot of people in his peer group are similar, actually. Sort of the opposite of bling.

Sounds like my mom. UA million miler (all flight miles) in coach only. Never tried to upgrade and gave all her miles away to charity.

I am the same way. I generally spend my miles on economy tickets. I have plenty of money but don’t feel compelled to spend it on, say, a business/first class ticket on a 2-hour flight when I can get an aisle seat in coach and be perfectly comfortable. If the flight’s longer than 3 hours, I do sometimes shell out for the front of the plane, but only sometimes, depending on the price.

For someone like Steves who flies with some frequency and only pays for Coach, it seems silly to eschew participating in the frequent-flyer programs. Even if he never redeems the miles, he could earn status, which would get him extra-leg-room seats and free checked baggage.

Well he thinks all the seats should be the same, no premium cabins.

Also can’t you donate miles? He gives a lot to charitable causes. Or if nothing else gift miles or award tickets to some who can’t afford them.

So, what? You can donate cash to, and doing so doesn't propagate this company controlled ecosystem.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the concept that simply accepting free money - which is what FF programs are, because the miles can be used to "purchase" flights - is somehow "propagating a company controlled ecosystem."

It's just accepting something of value offered for free. It only becomes an obsession if you decide to make it so.

Rick Steves most certainly has not made his opposition to so-called "loyalty" programs an obsession.

He has simply made a principled decision not to support -- directly or indirectly -- a system that he considers to be bad for consumers in the long run.

Obviously few, if any, FlyerTalkers have made the same choice, but most of us can understand his reasoning.

Wait, Rick Steves is pro-recline? Now that is controversial.

Thinking about this some more, how is it that he has flown so much in TATL economy, yet he has not had to sit next to a large person overflowing into his seat, a belligerent yelling drunk, a person behind him objecting to his reclining on an overnight flight or a person who has not bathed in a week? Let alone that at his age he doesn’t have lots of aches and pains after sitting upright for 8 hours. These are all the reasons I went from flying international economy when I was younger to figuring out how to get upgrades and saver awards.

Archive of MSN article summarizing the Washington Post profile.

https://archive.md/A6iTA

Don't waste your time scrolling through all the ads at the bottom linking to other MSN articles.

I love Rick and his books. I also don’t fully agree with his flying philosophy. Most of his books consistently suggest using a travel agent for booking flights because he’s catering to that most common denominator of travelers who might rarely fly an international flight. His focus is with the destination and not the journey to the destination. Details of the journey aren’t interesting for him.

my wife & I use a lot of his info for trips while also using a lot of info from FlyerTalk. While we obviously don’t use a travel agent, I heard in his audiobook that the writer david sedaris uses a travel agent for all of his travel so that IRROPS won’t worry him.