Arival

Think back to one of your most memorable travel experiences: how many people were you with? If you’re like most travelers, your best memories will likely be those made in a small group, those that felt the most personal. According to the latest Arival research, travelers increasingly remember — and seek out — experiences with smaller, even private, groups.

Once the afterthought of the trip planning process for most travelers, day tours have become central to the travel experience. Nearly four in five U.S. travelers  and 83% of European travelers took a tour on a trip in the past year. But what travelers are looking for in tours continues to evolve.

Most of the talk around AI in travel experiences recently has been on its impact on discovery — people using AI to find things to do and plan their trips. However, it’s quickly coming for the next step: booking. For some, it’s already there. A new Google integration with Viator is making Viator’s catalogue of tour, activity and attraction products available for booking directly in the Gemini AI chat interface.

The travel industry has been buzzing about self-guided tours for several years. Arival has identified dozens of self-guided tour platforms, new startups continue to enter the market and AI only accelerates entrepreneur interest in the category. But while self-guided tech continues to evolve, where travelers are actually using self-guided experiences is perhaps more interesting — and somewhat unexpected. For traditional self-guided walking tours, demand has been fairly stable.

The first Arival in Australia has been a dream since the early days of Arival, and now that the event has come and gone, it still feels a bit like a dream to be honest — but that’s probably the jet lag speaking. After returning home with a camera full of Uluru sunset pictures and a suitcase full of ginger beer (within my legal limit of course), I’m still struggling with how to sum up the incredible experience that was Arival 360 | Brisbane.

The travel experiences sector — tours, activities and attractions — has been the fastest-growing sector of travel for a while. But as anyone who’s worked in this sector knows, it’s far from uniform. So where are the biggest opportunities and areas for growth in in-destination travel experiences? The latest report from Arival & Phocuswright takes a fresh look at the latest data to explore this question.

Outdoor experiences online travel agency (OTA) checkyeti has acquired Manawa, the company announced today, combining two marketplaces for outdoor and nature activities in Europe under a single group. Founded in Vienna in 2014, checkyeti has built its business around skiing, hiking and other winter and summer outdoor activities across Europe; Manawa, operated by Paris-based Alentour SAS, has built a similar footprint with a particularly strong presence in France.

If you’ve ever wondered why some operators dominate search results while others with equally strong experiences barely get noticed, reviews are almost certainly a big part of the answer. Learning how to get more positive reviews for your experiences is one of the highest-leverage moves available to you. Far beyond simple vanity metrics, reviews now function as infrastructure.

Europe’s most beloved destinations have never been more popular — and for tour, activity and attraction operators, that’s not entirely a good thing. Overcrowded areas, traffic congestion and tightening regulations are quietly eroding the quality of experiences that travelers come to Europe for in the first place. For operators who have built their businesses on delivering those experiences, the pressure to adapt is real. So how are operators handling it?

Trendspotting may drive media headlines and (some) conference agendas, but operators need to focus on something more important: what travelers are actually buying. The travel industry loves a buzzword. Slow travel. Regenerative tourism. Digital detox. Set-jetting. Every year brings a few new trends that promise to reshape travel. But when we asked more than 560 multi-day tour operators what travelers actually want, the answers were surprisingly straightforward.