What
Adventure travel is trending — at least for members of Ensemble Travel Group and Travel Leaders Group (TLG), two travel agent consortia. Both have recently released member surveys highlighting the popularity of this market segment with clients.
Why It Matters
Ensemble members ranked “active” and “adventure” as the most popular travel types after tailor-made vacations, while TLG advisors say this category is the most popular travel specialty. While traditional interests such as food and wine, honeymoons/destination weddings and wellness remain popular, agents looking to expand their business would do well to educate themselves on the latest adventure
offerings.
Fast Facts
- Ensemble’s Outlook Survey was conducted in September and released at the company’s annual conference at the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar in the Bahamas last month and surveyed nearly 2,000 members.
-TLG’s Travel Trends Survey was released late last month and was conducted among 1,000 North American travel advisors.
-TLG advisors ranked active and adventure trips as the No. 1 niche and specialty travel category, followed by honeymoon and destination wedding, culinary and wine, reunions and wellness. Women-only journeys came in at No. 6. Culinary travel also ranked highly on Ensemble’s survey.
What They’re Saying
“The public’s pursuit of the more personal travel experiences across cultures and traditions around the globe is at the core of our members’ success,” said Lindsay Pearlman, co-president of Ensemble. “And while mainstream travel continues to be a vacation staple, the customized bucket-list adventures that used to be ‘once in a lifetime’ have now become ‘as often as I can’ and built around first-hand immersion into the destination.”
“These survey results reinforce a number of interesting trends we’re seeing in the travel industry right now,” said Ninan Chacko, CEO of TLG. “There is an increasing focus on specialty and niche travel and consumers are clearly relying on travel advisors to book their most important and treasured journeys.”
The Details
Ensemble
www.joinensemble.com
Travel Leaders Group
www.travelleadersgroup.com
