Our company anniversary in 2021 - 20 years of Radweg-Reisen

After the company was founded in 2001 in a small former horse stable, our company developed into the largest cycle tour operator in Germany. Since June 2001, we have been continuously on the road for you throughout Germany and Europe, always in search of the most beautiful routes and places.

We look back on an incredibly exciting and thrilling 21 years in which new destinations were added, we constantly expanded our travel offer, we gained new partners and gave countless bike travelers an unforgettable vacation. Now we are looking forward to the coming years – with you as our guests! New destinations are already in the pipeline, so stay tuned!

We have dug deep into our photo archives, dusted off many old stories and tell you our story on this page. How it all began and how we became what we are today!

2001 – 2006: How it all began

It all started with the idea of offering cycling holidaymakers on Lake Constance a luggage-free vacation on a bike. What do you need? A website, a name (Bodensee-Radweg Service GmbH), two sturdy and mobile vehicles called Suzi (a Suzuki Super Carry, which soon turned out to be completely undersized) and Pummel (an old Mercedes van), an office in a converted horse stable and a vision. In 2002, we organized our first cycle tours on Lake Constance. The offer quickly became more and more popular with cyclists. In the summer of 2003, the perfect weather also helped. The Internet began its triumphal march at this time and things went so well for us that we very quickly decided to offer our customers tours along the Danube as well. More destinations followed and after five years we even had a printed catalog!

The growing number of employees was already treading on each other's toes in 2003 in the attic office, which we also shared with two other companies. We therefore moved to the first floor in 2004. But here, too, we quickly ran out of space. So the only option was to move to larger premises. A big step in the right direction – in 2006 we moved with bag and baggage from Mainaustraße to Fritz-Arnold-Straße, where we still work today.

2007 – 2011: New bikes, new destinations, new company name. We're taking off!

From 2007, we increasingly expanded our range. Since then, we have included numerous cycle tours in Italy and more places in our program. We also took another big step – in 2007 we bought our first 300 bicycles. Previously, we worked with a local bike rental company, but it was time to invest in our own bikes – our red speedsters! But they weren't the only ones to move into our bike shed. As motor-assisted bikes became increasingly popular, e-bikes also became an integral part of our bike fleet in 2007.

In 2009, we were able to delight more than 10,000 guests with our all-round service. One year later, the next piece of the puzzle in our portfolio was our own bike tours on the Altmühl and Neckar rivers, and in Switzerland.

A major milestone in our company history: In 2011, Bodensee-Radweg Service GmbH became our current company name, Radweg-Reisen GmbH.

2012 – 2016: New developments in the north and east of Germany

In 2012, we decided to offer our own tours in the southern Black Forest and on the Upper, High and Alpine Rhine. A year later, Simon Mink became the sole managing director and the Eurofun Group became the majority shareholder of Radweg-Reisen

Those were the changes that gave us additional motivation to head north the following year and, from 2014, to organize our cycle tours on the Baltic Sea ourselves instead of having them organized. Since then, our vans have been setting off from our new location in Lübeck to deliver bikes and luggage between the Flensburg Fjord and the Szczecin Lagoon so that you have time for the finer things on your vacation. In the meantime, our bike tours on the Baltic Sea have become real customer favorites.

A large influx of guests also means lots and lots of travel documents. And as these are one of the flagships of our company, alongside smooth luggage transport logistics and impeccable bicycles, we switched to a completely new, dynamic system for updating and creating them in 2015. Since then, you will receive personalized travel documents that inspire, inform and guide you on the right paths on your bike tour. And while we were at it, we also gave our catalog a new layout.

Our team also received support on four paws: since 2015, the black mongrel dog Rocky has accompanied his master to the office every day and has become an integral part of the Radweg-Reisen crew.

2017 – 2021: Eager guests and an eager Radweg-Reisen team

We are adapting our range of tours to the needs of our customers – from now on you will also find hiking tours throughout Europe in our offer, which you can also enjoy completely carefree with luggage service. However, our main business is and remains cycling. In 2018, our guests cycled a whopping 3.7 million kilometers with us.

Today, our team has 40 permanent employees, all of whom are cycling enthusiasts: travel specialists, logistics experts and mechanics, copywriters, translators, self-declared marketing nerds and luggage drivers. In summer, the Radweg-Reisen crew at our four locations grows by up to 60 additional seasonal employees. And the trend is rising! And the number of suitcases we transport for our customers is also growing - we now transport over 85,000 suitcases a year, covering around 550,000 kilometers in our transport vehicles. Speaking of transport vehicles: since 2019, our trusty vans have also been traveling the world in a new design as "Die Urlaubmacher". The punctuality of our luggage transport is impressive: our guests' suitcases arrive at their accommodation in 99.86% of all luggage transports – often much earlier than our guests, who quite rightly take their time and enjoy their cycling stage!

In 2019, the most popular cycle tours with our guests were once again the Lake Constance Cycle Path (8 days / 7 nights), the Baltic Sea Cycle Path (8 days / 7 nights) and the Danube Cycle Path (8 days / 7 nights).

The enchanting Main region and Denmark have been our newest self-organized destinations since 2020 – sure to awaken anyone's wanderlust!

We used the pandemic-related "quiet phase" in 2020/2021 to improve internal processes, tidy up our drives and come up with new ideas... You can look forward to it!