Best Of

** If you include the tips as part of the salary and part of the cost of the trip the incentive for an over the top performance and experience has been removed**

I respectfully disagree. There are many ways to incentivize performance that have nothing to do with tips. As long as expectations are set, metrics established, recognition rewarded, employees will perform well. My only tour guide experience other than Tauck is with Rick Steves. Tipping is not allowed. He pays his guides well, rewards performance. His guides are uniformly excellent. He has a very high employee retention rate, customer satisfaction, and thousands of repeat tour members.

The tour ending in Athens is what I was hoping for too. I’m still holding a reservation for the May 1st trip, but I’m wondering that too. I doubt Id make another trip to see Athens-those days are sadly over.

Has anyone had experience with Turkish Air? They have one flight a day out of DFW to Thessaloniki.

A recent tour director told me that tour directors are paid a good wage, he never expects tips and says if you don’t like missing out on tips, find another job.

I find that hard to believe. The total amount of tips on a regular tour adds up to a lot of money. No rational person is going to be indifferent to that amount of money.
For 40 people on a 14 day tour at $12/day, that amounts to $6,720. I would have to make a LOT of money in salary to be indifferent to that.

[Correction: the number of work days in a year is about 260. 40 people at $12/day would project to an annual income of $144,000.]

Yes, I believe it's only river cruises which makes sense given the logistics like props, hotel staff to help with the party, and that it's an all Tauck guest composition.

Hidden Greece is a new trip beginning in 2026. The itinerary is now posted on the website. It is totally a land journey. Starts in the north and moves down to the south ending in Crete. It’s totally different from The Treasures of the Agean trip. It looks amazing. I’ve not been to Greece before and wanted Greek history. I’m planning on confirming my reservations for next May. Then perhaps I’ll go the following year on the small cruise ship that begins in Athens, island hops and ends in Istanbul. It looks incredible too, but the single supplement is almost the same as double occupancy. Windstar is definitely not encouraging solo travelers!

We have enjoyed all of our river cruises but loved the Douro with Madrid and Lisbon anchor cities and Savoring France. The former was very relaxing while the latter offered some of the best excursions we have ever experienced. We also loved the Yuletide Holiday cruise for all the festivities and cultural activities. I don’t think you can go wrong with any of them. Do you wish to return to a country you have been to or try something new?