About Us
We Believe the World Is Meant to Be Experienced
Time Travel Selective Tours grew from something that has been part of our lives for decades—a love of travel, discovery, culture, creativity, and bringing people together.
We’re Ricky Tims and Hugo Dos Santos, and we created Time Travel Selective Tours to offer thoughtfully planned journeys to places we find fascinating. We aren’t interested in simply collecting destinations or racing from one attraction to the next. We want to experience a place—to see what makes it beautiful, learn what makes it interesting, meet the people, taste the food, discover the unexpected, and still have enough breathing room to enjoy being there.
Our tours are designed with quality, comfort, thoughtful pacing, and memorable experiences in mind. We seek out the iconic places worth seeing, but we’re equally interested in the discoveries that happen between them. And because these are journeys we genuinely want to take ourselves, we travel with you.
That’s at the heart of Time Travel Selective.
Experience That Reaches Around the World
Travel and group leadership are not new adventures for us.
Ricky has decades of experience traveling internationally as a teacher, lecturer, performer, photographer, tour host, and guide. He has created and led tours through the Iberian Peninsula, England, and Scotland, and has served as a guide or host on journeys to the Amazon, Machu Picchu, the Galápagos Islands, Kenya, Ireland, Eastern Europe, and beyond.
Those experiences have provided an invaluable education of their own: understanding the rhythm of group travel, recognizing when an itinerary needs breathing room, anticipating travelers’ needs, and knowing that the moments people remember most aren’t always the ones printed in bold type on the itinerary.
Hugo brings an entirely different—and wonderfully complementary—perspective.
Meet Ricky
Ricky Tims is an internationally acclaimed quilter, musician, photographer, teacher, author, and speaker whose creative career has taken him around the world.
Best known internationally for his work in the quilting world, Ricky has spent decades teaching and inspiring audiences while simultaneously pursuing his passions for music, photography, art, and storytelling. Travel has been woven throughout that career, giving him an enduring curiosity about history, landscape, architecture, culture, and the people who make every destination unique.
As a tour host, Ricky brings that same curiosity to the journey. He loves sharing what he knows, discovering what he doesn’t, and creating an environment where travelers feel welcomed, included, and cared for.
You can learn more about Ricky’s creative work at RickyTims.com and Ricky Tims Creative.
Meet Hugo
Portugal-born Hugo Dos Santos is a photographer, accomplished chef, multilingual traveler, and lifelong European.
Speaking five languages has given Hugo an unusual ability to connect with people across cultures—and his engaging personality means he generally does. His European background brings another dimension to Time Travel Selective, particularly in understanding the cultures, customs, food, and rhythms of life that can be missed when simply passing through a destination.
Photography is one of Hugo’s great passions, and he sees travel through a photographer’s eyes: light, detail, landscape, architecture, people, and those fleeting scenes that tell the story of a place.
And then there’s food. As an accomplished chef, Hugo believes one of the best ways to understand a culture is often sitting right there on the plate.
As avid photographers, Ricky and Hugo also share their experience and creative insight to help you see—and photograph—your journey in new ways, returning home with extraordinary images that go far beyond the typical tourist snapshot. Together, they bring two backgrounds, two perspectives, and one shared curiosity about the world.
Why Time Travel Selective?
The name is intentional.
Time has long held special meaning for Ricky. His personal philosophy has always been rooted in carpe diem—seize the day—and the belief that NOW is the time to do the things that matter.
And, of course, travel is exactly what we’re doing.
Selective describes how we do it. We aren’t trying to offer every destination to everyone. We choose a limited number of journeys and build them carefully, seeking experiences that we believe are worth the investment of your time.
Time Travel Selective Tours was created for travelers who value experience over simply checking boxes, quality over bargain travel, and connection over anonymity.
We want you to be comfortable. We want you to feel cared for. We want you to learn something, laugh a lot, discover something unexpected, meet interesting people, and come home with stories worth telling.
Because we believe travel enriches and educates us. It expands our understanding of other people, other cultures—and sometimes ourselves.
We never return home the same as if we had never left.
Where We Call Home
Time Travel Selective Tours is based in the beautiful Ozarks of southwest Missouri, near Branson.
But in many ways, our office is wherever the next journey takes us—from the American Southwest to the Christmas markets of Europe, from ancient cities to extraordinary landscapes.
We’re intentionally keeping Time Travel Selective personal and selective. Our goal is not to be the biggest tour company or offering dozens of departures every year. It’s about creating journeys we’re excited to take—exploring hidden gems—and inviting you to experience it with us.