PHOTO: Clients can bungee jump with G Adventures.

Travel itself is adventure. The yearning to travel is a desire for adventure, to experience the new. As travelers become increasingly experienced and have seen more of what there is to see and done more of what there is to do, tour operators have expanded their offerings and their frontiers to try to stay ahead of their prospective clients.

Adventure is at the core of all travel offerings, but there is an increasing number of options for those who want a more concentrated dose of adventure in their travel. Tour operators are responding to that demand by offering new, more challenging experiences. The special interest category of adventure travel is a robust and growing market.

To fit into the category of adventure travel, an activity typically must involve at least some physical challenge. Even the physical challenge of hiking around a site like Angkor Watt or Machu Picchu is more demanding than most traditional travel experiences, especially at the high end of the market. The adventure may be mostly on an intellectual or aesthetic level, or it may be more of what are called extreme adventures, such as skydiving or mountain climbing.

Getting into the adventure travel market is a natural progression from selling the adventure associated with any kind of travel. If you have been selling travel, you’ve been selling adventure, and so adventure travel is not foreign to you. But now is a good time to sharpen your focus on this growing niche market.

The explosion of adventure travel products on the market is evidence of this niche’s growth in popularity, but no one can say for sure how large its market is. There is little data to measure the size of the market, and there is no uniformity among the various sources of data as to how the segment is defined or measured. Of the scattered reports available, much of the data is years old in an industry that changes from year to year.

However, in 2012 research consultant Christina Heyniger, working with the Adventure Travel Trade Association and George Washington University, surveyed 855 consumers in the Americas and Europe who account for 73 percent of global travel expenditures and determined that the global market for adventure travel is about $89 billion. Twenty years ago, adventure travel accounted for only about 5 percent of the overall travel market, but in 2009 that number had grown to 26 percent. Since then, the market has been growing 17 percent a year, in contrast to the steady 4 percent growth rate of the industry at large. Though such statistics can only be rough estimates, it’s clear enough that adventure travel represents a great opportunity for a travel agent who has a feel for it and wants to take the plunge.

PHOTO: Zip-lining is a popular adventure activity.

What is adventure? The word “adventure” is going to mean different things to different clients. According to David Herbert, chief experiential officer of Great Safaris, “The definition of ‘adventure’ is different experiences for different people. Slow room service is considered an adventure for some clients.”

It’s easy enough to see that skydiving or bungee jumping is adventure travel, but it’s not so easy on the other end of the range of experience to draw the line between adventure travel and other kinds.

G Adventures’ kind of adventure is a broad-based definition, something that takes in all the senses and faculties. It’s characterized by Ron Fenska, director of U.S. sales for G Adventures, as “active exploration, cultural immersion, embracing the unexpected, escaping the well-trod path and creating true lifelong connections with the people and places we visit. We want someone to look at that verbiage and say to themselves, ‘That is me. I’m 25 or 65, and I’ve got this passion to go out there and really see the world and just gobble it up and explore and taste everything I can while I’m out there.’”

Travel agents who want to sell adventure travel should open up their definition of it, according to Tom Armstrong, corporate communications manager for Tauck.

“In selling adventure travel, agents shouldn’t limit their focus to the serious outdoors-type person who’s ready to go trekking in Nepal or sea kayaking with whales in Baja,” says Armstrong. “In recent years, the adventure travel category has expanded dramatically and a broader cross-section of travelers are now interested in more accessible, soft adventure experiences. We launched our Culturious trips to appeal to this demographic — Boomer-aged travelers who want to push the limits of their comfort zone by zip-lining in Costa Rica or hiking in Cinque Terre, but who also want to experience an authentic immersion in local culture and, at the end of the day, to enjoy fine dining and the amenities of a boutique luxury hotel.”

Whatever “adventure” means to you as a travel agent, here are some reflections and tips from some of the top tour operators on how to sell adventure travel.

PHOTO: Hike the Cinque Terre with Tauck.

Look for adventure clients among your regular clients. According to Steve Lima, marketing manager USA for G Adventures, “One strategy travel agents can use to increase their adventure travel sales is to look at past clients who have traveled with an escorted tour operator and educate them on the benefits of traveling in a small group and what authentic travel really means. Travel agents should think less in terms of adventure activities like zip-lining, bungee jumping and white-water rafting and more in terms of experiences that encourage travelers to step off the beaten path and embrace the unexpected. Sometimes the biggest adventure of all is dining with a local family or having the freedom to explore an interesting market on your own.”

Adopt a broad definition of “adventure.” Steve Cox, executive director of International Expeditions, says the tools for selling adventure are at your fingertips. “What most agents may not realize is that they already have a base of adventure travel clients,” he says. “Adventure travel isn’t just climbing something or roughing it. It is simply going on journeys that tap into nature, authentic local cultures and some physical activity. It is easy to tap into your existing client base to ‘convert’ them into adventure travelers just by asking a few questions: Do you like to hike or take nature walks? Do you like exploring local markets/bazaars when you travel? Do you or your family like wildlife? All of these point to experiences that can be found on soft adventures and expedition cruises.”

Take advantage of tour operator marketing support. Tour operators offer a range of support to help travel agents sell their products. Jean Fawcett, media relations manager for Abercrombie & Kent, says, “After registering on the A&K website, home-based agents can customize presentations and itineraries with their own header and footer. Agents can convert any A&K web page to a PDF to send web pages as an attachment.” The site also provides access to Virtual Tours showing the traveler’s perspective, as well as a library of press material with information on new destinations and itineraries that agents can use in their own newsletters or blogs. Other tour operators also offer support.

PHOTO: Many clients enjoy experiences such as river rafting on an adventure trip.

Tap into the best operators of what you want to sell. Dan Austin, director of Austin Adventures, says “Pick a few solid operators to get to know and promote them to your existing client base. Share and sell adventure travel as a solid alternative to cruises or Club Med-type resorts. The agent’s client base of corporate or leisure travelers are all good candidates for adventure travel.”

Bring adventure into family travel. According to George Johns, vice president of sales for International Expeditions, “Family travel has morphed from Disney theme parks and car trips to National Parks to include exotic destinations like the Peruvian Amazon, Galapagos Islands and East Africa. The most successful agents are offering the full range of experiences to their family clientele. Family travel has blossomed into something rewarding and designed to create real quality time for the family members. True family trips are structured fun/learning experiences for the family together, for the kids alone, and with some alone time for the adults, who meanwhile can be certain that their children are in capable and qualified hands.”

Combine and balance adventure with other components. Jim Holden, president of African Travel, says adventure must be integrated with other components of a well-rounded travel experience. “The main goal should be to define for the adventure seeker a quality experience that encompasses adventure. Selling adventure travel is as much about designing a full itinerary, delivering experiences above and beyond, as it is about focusing on the ‘adventure’ bit, whatever that might be — biking, heli-skiing, etc. At African Travel, we’ve sent people to do whitewater rafting down the Zambezi, but the adventure bit was very much part of a complete safari delivering the full safari experience of wildlife and culture as well as adventure. In so doing we make sure the adventure traveler can see the value of participating in a full safari that includes wildlife viewing as well as the adventure bit. That enables the tour operator to sell more than just the adventure activity.”

Point out the sustainability appeal. An increasing number of people are concerned with sustainability issues and are interested in traveling with tour operators who observe the principles of sustainable tourism. Fortunately, such awareness is increasingly common among tour operators in the adventure space. According to G Adventures’ Ron Fenska, “People are looking for this unique brand of travel that is going to give them complete immersion of the cultures that we’re visiting,” he says. “I think the eyes are opening up a little bit, so it leads to a little bit of sustainability and community, which is the cornerstone of what our company is all about. When we’re visiting these areas, our people are staying in these communities and those tourism dollars are staying there, which ultimately leads to a thriving economy within these small little markets. And this is important to us. It’s critical for us to share that with our passengers and with the places we’re visiting.”