Adventure Center's Nadine Gravis and Katie Olsson of Adventure Center & Intrepid with Maritime Travel's Leo-Paul Cormier
Intrepid's Kaitlyn Duggan with Exodus' Sharmil Goswami
A room full of adventurous agents!
Merit Travel's Glenn Wells & Julie Roy
Toronto’s Fran’s Restaurants aren’t known for their sultry ambience. The old-fashioned chain is famed for its comfort food, but the College Street location buzzed with passion Friday morning as a group of agents intrigued by the adventure travel sector convened over breakfast to learn more.
“Our staff have an average of 10 years with us and have visited an average of 45 countries,” Nadine Gravis, BDM Eastern Canada for Adventure Center told the untypically young group of agents. Repping a number of the world’s best known adventure travel companies, as well as packaging its own Africa in Style product, Adventure Center is keen to get the message out that adventure travel is not all about “sleeping in bunk beds and travelling with 18 year olds”. Agents should position it as small group, authentic travel.
Brands repped by Adventure Center include Intrepid Travel which features 3 styles of travel: Basic (essentially backpacking with a tour guide); Original (80% of their product) and Comfort (with 3-4* accommodation). Their tours range from 2 hours to a whopping 209 days! Food-centred tourism is a new trend for Intrepid with culinary-themed tours now available to Italy, Vietnam, India and more.
Exodus specializes in walking, hiking and biking tours – the latter being the fastest-growing sector according to Canadian rep Sharmil Goswami. “Cuba is our top-selling destination from Canada,” he told the group, “It’s a great destination if, like most of our clients, yours want to be less of a tourist and more of a visitor.” U.K.-based Exodus attracts Brits, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans and Americans on their 200 + itineraries.
At the high end of the scale are Peregrine Tours, touted as a great entry-level to “adventure travel” for the mature, well-travelled client who want in-depth cultural immersion and small-A adventure by day, comfort by night. Usually hosting 6 to 8 passengers per group, Peregrine attracts travellers from their 40s to their 60s, predominantly (like all the adventure travel tour operators) female. Makes sense, when you think of the safety-in-numbers aspect.
At the other end of the scale are Geckos, targeted at the 18 to 35s who want to leave their mascara at home (!) and get under the skin of a country, outside their comfort zone. Budget travel with the security of a group leader, and all departures guaranteed – what parent wouldn’t love that? Accommodation ranges from Bedouin tents to home stays, and even bare-basics programs branded Tight Arse. Yes, you read that right.
Among the crowd were Vision Travel Group’s Barbara Clements who told me, “My clients are into history and culture – and would rather do more trips, less expensively. After all, retirees have the time.” Leo-Paul Cormier of Maritime Travel was there because he sells adventure travel – “But not enough!” No doubt he’ll sell more after this smorgasbord of world travel at Fran’s.
