Maybe that`s why for more than 25 years more and more people have trusted in us to organize their bicycle vacation; they quickly notice the attention to the details in all of our offers. As bikers, we know the easy to ride and yet almost car-free routes and can avoid too steeps ascents. And we ourselves have experienced all the benefits that turn a bicycle tour into a very special event. Bicycle tours offer the opportunity to enjoy the landscape with all your senses, to hear the chirping of the cicadas, to smell the scent of rosemary, to indulge in colours.
We know all of the tours offered on this website from our own experience. In short words: with our tours, we would like to offer you what has been offered to us, and many more very special individual impressions. Enjoy romantic castles, splendid cathedrals and cities and solitary villages as well as the treasures of nature, deep forests, olive groves, rugged costal areas and mountain chains. We are convinced that you will find the right offer for yourself in our selection.
Company history
since 1990:
Rückenwind Reisen was founded in 1990 as a limited company.
2002:
In this year, our company is taken over by Eurofun from Obertrum in Austria. Mr Dietmar Baumanns is appointed Managing Director and takes over the management of the company.
2004:
For the first time, more than 5000 guests place their trust in us and book a trip from our catalogue. The work and continuous improvement of our own products bears fruit.
2006:
The ‘East Frisian Impressions’ tour is offered for the first time and the response was absolutely overwhelming. The route, starting in Oldenburg and including stops in Emden, Norden, Wittmund and Dangast, was developed and customised entirely in-house.
2010:
For the first time, we welcome well over 700 guests on our self-produced cycle tours in France. Rückenwind has thus sustainably developed into a specialist for cycle tours and shows time and again that there are still new areas to discover. Our guests can look forward to new tours every year. For the first time, we have published our own catalogue, which contains a large number of bike and boat offers. The popularity of this catalogue once again demonstrates the management's ‘good nose’ for reacting to emerging trends earlier than anyone else.
2011:
Andreas Bunge takes over the management of the company. He has worked for us in many roles since 2004 and is very familiar with cycle tourism. The company now has 14 part-time and full-time employees as well as many employees working in the destinations.
2013:
Despite the floods on the Elbe, we continue to increase our guest numbers. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our local tour guides in particular, who not only looked after our guests well, but also kept us up to date at all times. Thanks to good communication between tour guides, our office and our guests, we survived this flood phase well.
In November 2013, we went online with a new website. In addition to a revised design, some improvements and new features have also been added.
2014:
We have expanded. Now that the industrial estate in Oldenburg-Etzhorn is being expanded, we have joined it and built a beautiful large hall. The inauguration ceremony was a huge success and we would like to thank everyone who helped us with the construction.
2015:
Now that the workshop has been cleared out and we can use the hall, we have also expanded our office and converted the former hall into an additional office building. We are also celebrating our 25th anniversary this year, which we will be celebrating with friends, colleagues and partners in September.
2017:
In 2017, we restructured the catalogue with our guided group tours and integrated many new destinations into our travel programme, for example in Greece. India, Morocco and South Africa are also some exciting non-European destinations.
In addition, we were once again able to impressively increase our number of guests in 2017. For the first time, we exceeded the 11,000 guest mark. More than 1,000 of these guests opted for one of our Bike & Boat holidays, once again demonstrating the appeal of this offer.
Our cooperation with Velo de Ville is also new this year. You can order customised bikes, pedelecs and e-bikes from the Münster-based bike manufacturer. We have opted for bikes that are characterised, among other things, by special saddle suspension. This helps to ensure that our travellers remain comfortable on their bikes even after a long ride. The Rückenwind guests have enthusiastically accepted the new bikes.
2020:
We are celebrating our 30th anniversary and have organised two anniversary tours. On these trips, our guests will receive a surprise on the tour this year. We are very happy about our many regular guests and partners who have supported us over the years.
This year in particular, we realise how important good partners are. From mid-March to the end of May, we have to cancel all tours due to the coronavirus crisis. We love our work, but this time had a big impact on our minds. We were divided into two teams, one in the office and one in the home office, and were still always easy to reach for our customers. It was a strange time, not just for us but for the whole world, with everything changing so quickly that there was hardly any time to adjust.
We would like to thank our customers for their loyalty this year in particular. Since June, we have been able to start some tours again and were very pleased with how well the cooperation with the hotels and all our partners went. It is also pleasing that we are welcoming more and more new customers, as the demand for active holidays is constantly increasing.
We would like to thank the entire Rückenwind team, who have stuck together so well during this time.
2021:
Due to the Corona crisis, but also for reasons of environmental protection, we have changed our catalogue mailing. The group catalogue will be integrated into our ‘Cycle Tours 2021’ catalogue and the main mailing will now only take place once a year. Our customers will now receive the ‘Bike and Boat’ and ‘Cycling Tours 2021’ catalogues together at the end of September.
2022:
2022 will be a record year for us. This has shown us that our form of travel is attracting more and more people. Due to the pandemic, we did not initially expect this, but the number of travel bookings surpassed anything we have ever experienced in the history of Rückenwind Reisen. Planning for the season was not easy: at the beginning, it was still completely unclear what the rules would be and how and when the travel times would even take place. We therefore did not add any new trips to our programme for the time being, but instead concentrated on our existing trips.