Adventure tourism is growing in popularity. Between 2019 and 2027, the size of the global adventure tourism market is expected to have expanded at a 15% CAGR. Thus, it is no surprise that trekking across Mongolia or kayaking in Antarctica is appearing on travelers’ bucket lists. Travel advisors who can sell these experiences are poised to cash in on an estimated $1.8 billion market opportunity.
Adventure tourism, which includes exploring new, off-the-beaten-path destinations, participating in often rigorous leisure activities and getting up close and personal with nature, is booming for several reasons. The YOLO (You Only Live Once) and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) generations are becoming more affluent. They’re also looking to squeeze more physical and mental wellbeing, personal growth, learning and culture out of their leisure time.
While the world is an adventure traveler’s proverbial “oyster,” polar travel is becoming a more popular adventure travel category. The number of adventure travelers expected to visit the polar region will grow 6.5% annually from 2018 to 2030.
The Arctic and Antarctic regions beckon travelers for many reasons. Novelty plays a role, but technological advances, transportation and infrastructure are making it easier and less expensive for travelers to reach and explore the polar regions. Increased media and word-of-mouth exposure has raised traveler awareness and curiosity. Plus, more travelers are interested in seeing the effects of climate change and conservation efforts first-hand.
Quark’s new partner portal
As part of a broader strategy to promote safe and sustainable polar travel and help travel partners succeed, Seattle-based Quark Expeditions, the global leader in polar adventures, has introduced a new and improved Partner Portal. With increasing interest in polar travel and an ever-expanding range of choices, the new portal aims to provide the expertise and technology to transform every advisor into a polar expert.
“Effective preparation and support for our advisors mean a rewarding and inspiring experience planning the polar expedition of a lifetime for their clients,” says Wendy Batchelor, vice president of marketing for Quark Expeditions.
The new Partner Portal is a one-stop shop on all things Quark Expeditions. Travel advisors can download customizable marketing materials (brochures, maps, logos, expedition brochures, social media toolkits, sales toolkits, webinars, images and videos). The portal is also a central resource for accessing current pricing, expedition schedules, itineraries, ship information, special incentives and promotions exclusively for travel advisors, Quark’s sales team and news.
For advisors to sell travel to such a dynamic and delicate place, they must be well-versed in polar destinations and experiences. Thus, the Partner Portal features Quark Expeditions’ learn-from-anywhere PolarPRO training platform, providing advisors with short bite sized learning modules and certification upon course completion.
Perhaps the most exciting feature of Quark’s new Partner Portal is Parker the Polar Bear—an AI-enabled virtual assistant that can answer advisors’ polar questions in real-time—leveraging large language models trained on Quark Expeditions' vast repository of polar information.
Parker uses natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) to understand the user's intent, context, and preferences. It can also learn from user feedback and behavior to improve performance.
The Quark Expeditions Partner Portal was designed from the ground up with the travel advisor in mind. “During this process, we worked with a select group of travel professionals to understand what a great partner portal would look like to them. So, a key difference is that our new portal delivers what they asked for,” Batchelor explains.
The value of a partner portal
While there are many ways for travel advisors to learn about new tours and destinations—online directories, trade publications, advisor networks and FAM trips—once they’ve nailed down a likely destination, an online travel advisor portal is the most efficient and convenient way for advisors to collaborate with a tour operator.
Good portals provide travel advisors with a range of features, including up-to-date itineraries and availability to make informed recommendations and pricing with discounts, commissions, incentives and special offers to enable the best value-and-budget fit for their customers. Advanced tour portals also provide advisors with multiple user-friendly communication options and fast response times.
Partner portals deliver various benefits to travel advisors, such as reducing the amount of time and frustration associated with having to pull information from multiple sources to build a client’s itinerary. Portals are digital, so advisors can quickly gather and transmit information to travel customers.
An innovative platform can leverage data and choose from artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and other tools to give travel advisors a competitive edge when learning and sharing information with clients.
Diverse landscapes at both ends of the earth
The path to becoming a polar-savvy travel advisor begins with the understanding that polar travel involves more than visiting just the North and South Poles. The Arctic includes parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, Norway, Alaska and Iceland. The Arctic Circle, famous for geysers, volcanoes, waterfalls and hot springs, also features the vibrant Icelandic culture.
Polar adventure-seekers choose Norway for its scenic landscapes, including mountains, forests, lakes, and fjords, and a varied culture forged by Vikings, explorers and artists. Greenland, though mostly covered by ice, is a favorite of nature lovers, craving its spectacular fjords, glaciers and northern lights.
A sampling of Quark’s polar itineraries
Quark Expeditions offers a smorgasbord of polar expedition options. For example, the Antarctic Explorer: Discovering the 7th Continent tour takes adventurers camping in the crisp, cold outdoors (tents optional) so they can stare into the star-studded night sky and be lulled into sleep by penguins and humpback whales softly braying and exhaling nearby.
The Antarctic Express: Crossing the Circle tour takes travelers to the iconic Antarctic Circle. The trip “rewards passengers daily with views of dramatic ice formations, humpback whales swimming alongside the ship, leopard seals diving beneath your Zodiac, penguins sliding off icebergs into crystal waters, or giant petrels soaring above the crackling sea,” the firm says.
Quark guests travel by specially built polar vessels, including the Ultramarine, an ice-class 1A+ ship that cruises at 16 knots in open water and holds 199 guests and 140 staff and crew. Besides camping, activities can include hiking, polar plunging, Alpine heli-trekking, flightseeing, mountain biking, sea kayaking and zodiac cruising.
Exploring a fragile ecosystem requires expertise and experience. For more than 30 years, Quark Expeditions has guided adventure-seekers to the planet's rarest terrain. Quark’s Partner Portal is the firm’s latest effort to share the secrets of the polar region with travel advisors so they can create once-in-a-lifetime travel experiences for their clients.