Some like to climb on to sun lounges but others climb mountains
LAZING on a beach is no longer enough for many Aussie holidaymakers.
We are travelling out of our comfort zones more than ever before, climbing mountains, running marathons in overseas cities – anything that pushes us beyond our limits, physically and mentally.
David Goldman from Goldman Travel, a Helloworld Travel partner, says more and more travellers are opting for adventure and experience, desperate to get off the beaten track and see every corner of the globe.
“The whole fly and flop is lovely but we are finding that because of social media they want to go to places like Sri Lanka and do the tea trails, or glacier hiking in New Zealand, or to the Galapagos,” he says.
“I’ve had really well travelled clients who come to me and say ‘We want more, we want something else’. There’s a real hunger for seeing places and doing things that haven’t traditionally been on the map.”
That might be a trip such as an Intrepid Travel expedition tour that includes swimming with whale sharks in Djibouti or walking with Berber nomads in Morocco.
After a year of preparation, Reho Travel CEO Karsten Horne conquered Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania with a friend. He says they wanted to empower themselves through a challenging experience.
“People are trekking the Himalayas or running a marathon in each continent. For Kilimanjaro we trained for 12 months, shared stories for weeks afterwards and still have residual fitness. Compare that to a flop and drop holiday where the positive impact is gone before your tan.”
It took them seven days to climb Mt Kilimanjaro in August but, for Karsten, the adventure travel trend started early in life.
When he was eight years old, his family attempted to sail to England in a rubber dinghy – a story that is being turned into a feature film.
“In the past three years I have also kayaked in Antarctica, sandboarded in Namibia, mountain biked in Timor Leste, hiked in Nepal, been gorilla trekking in Rwanda, studied microfinance in Myanmar, ziplined in Canada, ridden a donkey in Ethiopia and ran the Auckland marathon a few weeks ago.”
Intrepid Group’s Erica Kritikides says adventure travel is growing, with particular demand from solo female travellers. The company’s Expedition Morocco trip has seen a 400 per cent increase in interest from female solo travellers.
“In 2018, 27 per cent of bookings on our Expeditions trip range were made by solo female travellers,” she says.
Last year, Intrepid launched a three-week uncharted expedition where the only details released were the start point of Kazakhstan and the end point of Mongolia.
“This is one of the world’s last remote frontiers, with no Wi-Fi and plenty of yak milk – the trip sold out within 24 hours, but more than that, bookings were predominantly made by female travellers,” Erica says.