What a great (and cold) summit for the adventure travel industry in Norway! Lots of great seminars and research were presented and some fun connections made – I’m still curious why Eartwatch was the onle volunteer travel provider there… Yes folks, volunteer travel really does fall into the adventure travel box and its time we had more of a voice in the Adventure Travel Trade Association, they do great work and we can learn from each other.
I’m still in Norway running around fjords but I wanted to start pushing out some of the great research and trends I learned this week – there is so much I’ll try to push it out in blurbs. I won’t source to the speaker and research as it will get confusing in a blog, but if you’d like to know more just send me an email.
Did you know…..
Google:
- According to Google Travel Trends the amount of people searching for ‘adventure travel’ is accelerating at a faster rate than any other form of travel
- Paid Adwords/PPC get 20-30% of clicks, while the organic listings get 70-80% of traffic – time to start getting serious about SEO
Volunteer Travel Trends:
- 4% of the US travel market has taken a volunteer vacation and is growing three times faster than any other travel segment
- 15M US travelers are interested in taking a volunteer vacation
- 1 in 5 volunteer travelers had studied abroad before volunteering or had other significant international experience in their early years
- More than half of the people that volunteer abroad are somehow part of a non-profit or volunteer at home
- Volunteer travelers are twice as likely as other travelers to be major donors
- One of main reasons travelers dont take a volunteer vacation is they assume they need building, medical or another specialized skill – looks like the industry needs to take a good look at its messaging if travelers think this!
Great stuff and more to come when my fingers thaw out from the cold Arctic!
Posted by voluntourismgal 
voluntourismgal
