Adventure Travel Gaining Popularity With Agents

Adventure travel is not just for the under-40 set nor the exclusive domain of experienced adventure enthusiasts anymore – and the majority of those booking adventure travel are spending significant money on one-week or longer trips, according to newly released survey results.

Conducted by Travel Leaders Group, one of the country’s largest travel agency companies, in partnership with the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA), which is a global authority on adventure travel, the survey results were unveiled today during Travel Leaders Network annual international conference, EDGE (Educate, Discover, Gather, Evolve), taking place in Las Vegas through June 16.

The survey, which is the first of a planned annual benchmarking of travel agent active and adventure sales in partnership with ATTA, was conducted among leisure-selling travel agents, primarily those who specialize in adventure travel. While adventure travel still makes up a small percentage of their overall business mix, 86 percent of the respondents indicated they’ve experienced growth in their adventure travel sales over the past three years. Also of note, the number of respondents who reported that the average age of their adventure travel clients falls into the 29-40 age range versus 41-50 age range differed by only one percentage point, and a healthy 22 percent of respondents indicated the average age of their adventure clients falls into the 51-60 age bracket.

The survey also revealed that 65 per cent of survey respondents stated the majority of their adventure travel business involves trips of seven to 10 days in length and another 21 per cent are most commonly booking journeys of 11 days or longer. From a pricing standpoint, 30 per cent of respondents said clients are spending $2000-3000 per person on average; another 33 per cent cited an average spend of between $3000-5000 per person and 22.5 percent indicated clients are typically spending $5000-plus per person on average.

“Clearly, adventure travel is on the rise and the average age of adventure travelers is expanding,” said John Lovell, CTC, President of Travel Leaders Network and Leisure Group. “Consumers are focused more and more on authentic, transformational and exciting travel experiences, which is helping to fuel the growth in adventure travel. And we are seeing many consumers spending big dollars on adventure travel to far-flung destinations on longer journeys as well as many who are combining active and adventure travel with some luxury elements. As the adventure travel market continues to evolve, the opportunities for both consumers and travel agents are unlimited,” Lovell commented.

The percentage of male versus female adventure travelers varied by only one percentage point (50.5 per cent male; 49.5 per cent female). However, a majority of the decision-making with respect to purchasing adventure travel is done by females (64 per cent), consistent with travel purchase trends in the larger travel industry.

Of the travel agents participating in the survey, 68 per cent indicated they personally participate in adventure travel and their top mechanisms for securing new business include client referrals, social media and Agent Profiler, an agent locator tool on TravelLeaders.com that easily enables consumers to find travel agents focused on specific specialties and destinations.