Tour Sign Up Help

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How to Sign Up for a Tour

The speediest way to sign up is to select and reserve your tour online, and make your deposit with a credit card. You can also sign up for a tour by faxing a 2013 tour application and credit card information to 425/608-4280, or mailing the information to:

Rick Steves ETBD
Attn: Tour Department
P.O. Box 2009
Edmonds, WA 98020
(Note: We do not accept credit card information sent by email.)

Our online tour signup form requires the acceptance of cookies to keep track of the items in your shopping cart and complete the order. If items do not stay in your cart, see "How to Enable Cookies"). We never use cookies to store sensitive customer information such as names, addresses, passwords or credit card numbers. If you would like to place an order, but cannot (or choose not to) allow cookies, use our printable tour application.

Select your desired departure date and note the tour status message. A $400 deposit per person is required to confirm the tour seat of your choice.

  • Sign up Now!
    You may request a seat for this departure date. Your reservation is not confirmed until we notify you by postal mail. Please do not book your airfare until you have received your written confirmation letter confirming you on tour.
  • Filling Fast
    The tour has up to four seats available. It is possible that the tour will be sold out by the time we receive your order. We strongly recommend that you add another tour in case we cannot confirm your first choice. If we cannot confirm you on a tour, we will contact you as soon as possible to discuss other options. Please do not book your airfare until you receive a written tour confirmation letter in the mail.
  • Join Waitlist
    The tour is currently sold out, but you may join the waitlist should we receive a cancellation. We also open additional tours based on demand. Please complete the online tour registration, so that we can confirm your tour if it becomes available. We allow a maximum of three waitlisted tours per person. No deposit is required for waitlisted tours.
Adding Tours and Changing your Tour Selection

You may sign up for more than one tour on a single order. Please do not create a separate tour order for additional tours. You can add another tour to your order using the link provided in your cart. If you choose the wrong tour, remove it from your cart and add another tour. Once you are happy with your selection, choose Continue Checkout.

Tour Alum Discount

To receive your alumni discount, note the year and country of each tour you've taken with us prior to the year of tour you're signing up for, and when you receive your written confirmation letter, you'll see that we have automatically deducted your alum discount from your final tour balance.

Solo Travelers, Private Rooms and Single Supplements

We room solo travelers (of the same gender) in a room together with twin-beds. We rotate roommates throughout the tour when there are multiple solo travelers and your guide will do his or her best to make the room assignments as fair as possible. If you would prefer a private room, we offer a limited number of optional, extra-cost (single supplement), private rooms on each tour. The single supplement payment is to guarantee you a private room, rather than sharing a twin room with other solo travelers. The single supplement payment does not guarantee you a larger or 'nicer' room. European single-bed rooms are generally the smallest and most basic rooms (without view or balcony) the hotels have to offer.

If you would like to request a private room and pay the single supplement, please indicate that preference with your tour reservation. You can pay your single supplement with a credit or debit card on the Web. If you prefer to mail your tour and single supplement request, please send your check or money order with your tour application to:

Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door
Attention: Tour Department
P.O. Box 2009
Edmonds, WA 98020

If a private room is not available, we will contact you immediately. In order to maintain our travel philosophy of staying in small, family-owned, centrally located hotels, we are only able to offer a limited number of private rooms on each of our tours.

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