Backroads Creates New Adventure Trips Aimed At Millennials

Backroads, which calls itself the world’s #1 active travel company, is known for its walking, biking, and multi-adventure trips all over the globe. Now it’s appealing to millennials with a new offering of 34 trips and more than 70 departures designed for travelers in their 30s and 40s.

The company’s new 30s & 40s collection is based on some of Backroads’ best itineraries. It includes a Dolomites Walking & Hiking Tour, a Peru Lodge-to-Lodge Trekking, and a Berlin to Prague Bike Tour. What makes these trips different is fresh energy and the company of active travelers at a similar younger life stage.

“There was an opportunity out there to create a segment of trips with guests at a similar stage of life in their 30s and 40s.”

“We saw a huge gap in the market in terms of luxury group travel and active travel trips for guests in their 30s and 40s,” Avery Hale Smith, Backroads’ Chief Experience Officer, said in an interview. Smith, who’s spearheading this launch, added that “a lot of the companies out there who do focus on millennials are focusing on either extreme sports or maybe budget trips or just solo travelers. Nobody is really doing it in the way Backroads is doing it.”

The way Backroads does it is offering active travel – walking, biking, and multi-adventures –mixed with various levels of luxury, carefully planned itineraries, well-trained and enthusiastic trip leaders, memorable hotels, a focus on food and wine, and a wide range of destinations worldwide.

Targeting the Next Generation

Backroads was groundbreaking when they began segmenting their trips years ago, offering Classic trips designed for couples, friends, and solos, and then classifying family trips by children’s age groups. In 2023, they launched Women’s Adventures. Now they’ve targeted younger travelers with the same approach.

“There was an opportunity out there to create a segment of trips with guests at a similar stage of life in their 30s and 40s,” Smith said, “and we had seen so much success with our age-segmented trips in the past, namely our family trips. There is sort of a shared experience when you are of the same age category or bracket that leads to that greater sense of connection, and we think that this will be a huge part of the experience.”

“We are coming into the largest wealth transfer in history,” Smith said, referring to the Great Wealth Transfer, where $27 trillion is expected to pass from boomers to their offspring by 2045. “Millennials are starting to really prioritize experiences and experiential travel. They are willing to spend money on travel more than the past generation.”

These trips are also an opportunity to jump on a transforming world, as generations shift.

“We are coming into the largest wealth transfer in history,” Smith said, referring to the Great Wealth Transfer, where $27 trillion is expected to pass from boomers to their offspring by 2045. “Millennials are starting to really prioritize experiences and experiential travel. They are willing to spend money on travel more than the past generation, and so we really want to be able to take advantage of that and meet the demand with these trips.”

The ”30’s & 40’s collection are the exact same as the Backroads Classic Trips. While they are not physically more challenging, “we did curate this collection of itineraries in a way that we think will cater most to what guests in their 30s and 40s are looking for,” Smith noted. “From our own market research and the guest feedback that we've gotten, there are a few themes that rise to the top in terms of what people are looking for.”

Smith says that “bucket list destinations, and off the beaten path locations, deep authenticity and cultural immersion in terms of meals and food” are important. Less so are Michelin-star experiences. Instead, she said it will likely be “farm to table or hidden gem locations that we think might resonate better with this demographic.”

Other trips that are part of the 30s & 40s collection are Canadian Rockies Heli-Hiking Tour, Vietnam & Cambodia Bike Tour, A Taste of Camino de Santiago Walking & Hiking Tour, and Alaska’s Glaciers & Coast Multi-Adventure Tour.

One of the great things about these trips is that so many of our trip leaders are within this demographic themselves,” Smith said. “They play a really integral role in the Backroads trip experience on all of our trips, but we expect that they're actually going to enhance the trip experience of these 30s and 40s trips even more so, given that they can really speak to the vision behind it, including how Backroads is evolving with the next generation of adventurous travelers.”