ATTA – Adventure ELEVATE – Event Recap 2021

Last week, the much anticipated Adventure Elevate event was hosted by the Adventure Trade and Travel Association. This 2-day digital event was attended by about 400 delegates from various offshoots of the adventure travel industry. Positive vibes were felt by all as the community was finally ‘together’ sharing hopes for the industry’s recovery. Let’s jump into the Adventure ELEVATE Event Recap!

SPRINGBOARD was the theme for the 2-day event intended to help the community focus on coming up with ideas that could then be used to solve challenges based on travellers’ expectations. And share ideas we did!

Day 1 – Adventure ELEVATE Event Recap

The event was kicked off by David Beurle speaking on Thriving in a Future World. David shared his predictions of the future, explored macro trends and how they might impact outdoor travel destinations, businesses, and individuals. Waves of societal change are putting immense pressure on tourism to meet the expectations of various groups.

He predicts that since humans are urban dwellers, people are and will continue to lose wilderness skills. Subsequently they will need training to safely head outdoors and need more and longer breaks from the concrete environment. Concluding with a question to the community, David asks “How do we evolve, stay relevant and assess what values will be most important to our industry, and to our guests?”

Concurrent Sessions

Next, we broke out into some concurrent sessions. Smaller groups focused on one topic. I sat in on the session called Tourism: Welding a Double-Edged Sword where we discussed tourism as a regional economic development tool and the fine balance between impact (over-tourism) and local benefit (economic stimulus).

David Beurle, Kristen Dahl, and Mike Wilson lead the conversation around what travel could look like post-pandemic and gave examples of local regions that are already doing. They expect travel to focus more on things like; impact management (environmental protection), sustainability, local and industry collaboration and avoiding over-tourism. The chat was exploding and so many great ideas shared. Read some of the comments here on page 5.

The key takeaway from this session was; You can’t put enough value BEING together, building trust, sharing, learning, challenges getting solved. Remember, all tourism strategies need to be driven by local sentiment!

D.N.A Networking and Virtual Adventures

D.N.A pre-assigned topic “rooms” were set up to imitate a cocktail setting where we could jump from one group to another or optionally stay in one meeting throughout the 90-minute networking session. It was fun to pop in and out of various conversations about biking, adventure dogs, your win in 2020 and other, lighter industry topics.

The virtual adventures were provided by Terra Group and included; Wine tasting in Argentina’s Altiplano region, a Species Quest onboard Darwin’s H.M.S. Beagle, and a Maya home building & homestay immersion. Super fun events and we all learned a lot!

Katie is an Online Business Manager to Adventure Tourism Business Owners!

Day 2 – Adventure ELEVATE Event Recap

Day 2 was kicked off by Lee Kitchen and Sura Al-Niami in their WORKSHOP: LISTENING FOR THE FUTURE. Lee and Sura provided role-play examples of these three tips for better listening;

  1. Use Active Listening – pay attention, repeat back what the other person is sharing, ask follow up questions, and say things like “tell me more about that”, “what i heard was” etc. to solidify and clarify understanding. DO NOT: try to multitask, listen just to respond, or offer up solutions.
  2. Empathetic Listening – be curious, nosey, extract feelings, ask Q’s, get to the WHY! Collect ALL the information, get into the customer’s headspace, ask “how does that make you feel”, say “that makes sense because..” to validate their reality. DO NOT: write down what you think is important, put facts before feelings or be judgey.
  3. Generative Listening – get to the idea stage, help them find a solution. Ask ‘what are potential solutions’, ‘why would that be helpful’, reframe and recite back, extract the principles, ask where else/ what other possibilities exist. DO NOT: offer solutions or stop listening!

This session will be very helpful to everyone in the travel space as destinations reopen and travellers come back with new concerns and expectations. The industry will need to also use social listening (watch for questions and comments on social media) to begin to anticipate the post-pandemic traveller’s needs.

ADVENTUREEXCHANGE Networking

The session I had been waiting for! This randomized and speed-dating approach to one-on-one meetings in a virtual setting was really fun! We had four-minutes to meet and greet the person who popped onto our screen.

For me, this was a fun challenge to describe what I do to folks in the industry as an Online Business Manager is not a traditional adventure travel role! The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and the connections made have already resulted in new clients and many supporting relationships.

Community Roundtables

This break-out room style session allowed us to learn about the following topics;

  • Bushfire Recovery Update with Tourism Australia
  • Payments: Reducing Costs and Avoiding Chargebacks with Flywire
  • Adventure Travel COVID-19 Health & Safety Guidelines with ATTA
  • How to Rebound Digital Marketing after COVID-19 with 829 Studios
  • Media Meet-and-Greet
  • Travel Advisor Forum: Pivoting, Partnerships, and Processes
  • Outdoor Adventure and Nature Travel in Japan
  • Running your Office in the NEW NORM by Katie Broadhurst
  • Local Travel Innovation – GLP films
  • LawTalk – Chunnie Wright

Full session briefs are here in the notes.

It was now time for the Closing Key Note by James Edward Mills, Over the Adventure Gap. James shared his research on marginalized groups in the adventure space reminding us of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech where he says “let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado”! The outdoor space is for all and he shared these tips with us;

  • Declare DIVERSITY is important to your organization
  • Directly engage with the people (in a marginalized group) you want to reach
  • Be vulnerable and empathetic: your going to make mistakes while engaging with these new groups
  • Partner with individuals and organizations that do DIVERSITY and INCLUSION well
  • Make adventures as ACCESSIBLE as possible to help develop skills and not overwhelm or trigger fear

The event closed with Shannon Stowell announcing Elevate Sedona for Nov 16-18, 2021 – fingers crossed we can all gather again! Beats Party Music by DJLK sent us on our way and was lively and fun, spurring memories of ATTA events past.

Getting to spend two days with people from the adventure travel industry is always a good time. Although the industry has been hit hard in 2020, the positive vibes and Springboard ideas everyone brought to the virtual space was incredibly rejuvenating! With that, this Adventure ELEVATE Event Recap comes to an end, like all good things;)

Want more? Click here to review the full notes from the event.

I hope we can all meet again, virtually to keep the conversations going. What was your event highlight or big takeaway?

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