Lifestyle Adventure Resorts Target the Future Luxury Traveler

Soft adventure luxury resorts throughout the Americas are diversifying their travel experiences to provide deeper immersion into the destination for a wider range of customer types. That was the primary takeaway at last month's PURE Life Experiences conference in Marrakech. We've recently covered a few of the more notable participants at the event: Fogo Island Inn in Canada, Great Plains Conservation in Botswana, Icehotel in Sweden, and the new luxury resort product in Australia. It's not so much a case of major systemic trend shifts in the soft adventure industry heading into 2016. It's more a matter of degree. Every independent property today is already trumpeting local experiential travel, so now resorts are attempting to differentiate themselves by offering a greater variety of experiences so guests can better customize travel options. "People have less and less time today, so when they do have time to be with people they care about, they want those experiences to count," said Simon Chen, managing director of The Little Nell in Aspen, Colorado. "Family time especially is incredibly important, so no one wants a kids camp anymore." Little Nell has expanded its range of activities over the last few years, creating everything from new snowcat tractor tours over unmarked terrain in winter to multi-day bicycling tours in summer. Chen told Skift that the hotel's summer business has increased to the same level as winter over the last year because of the new