Remote Workers Prompt Adventure Tour Operators to Switch Up Itineraries

From the peak of Mount Everest to Costa Rica's pristine beaches, the remote work trend is filtering down to adventure tour operators and impacting how they plan itineraries, negotiate with suppliers and even pick the destinations they travel to.

For most white-collar workers a two-month trip across Latin America would have been off-limits before the pandemic, but shuttered offices coupled with remote working has given them a newfound freedom to roam.

Furtenbach Adventures, G Adventures, and Intrepid are just three outfits welcoming the new trend as they start to see changes in the way guests want to travel. And even at the top end of the corporate ladder, CEOs, investment bankers and consultants are showing a thirst for adventure, taking advantage of the extra flexibility remote work offers them.

"A few years ago, CEOs were fine with having internet access at base camp, so they could send emails and make their calls, but now it’s not enough," said Lukas Furtenbach, founder and owner of Furtenbach Adventures. "They need to be online even on the summit, maybe even have a Zoom call at the last camp at 8,000 meters. And that’s crazy, but it’s becoming normal."

The Austrian family-run tour operator, which also has a U.S. branch called Infinity Expeditions, has seen an uptick in clients opting for a "hypoxia tent" in which they sleep for up to eight weeks at their home before traveling to their mountain of choice. This lowers the oxygen level in their blood so they arrive acclimatized and means busy executives can reach the summit of Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, in just three weeks.

"They want to have the same success as they do on Wall Street, and move that to the mountains," Furtenbach added. "The problem with these people is that before there was never any time. They could never afford to take off eight or nine weeks, whatever the cost. Our idea was we had to find a way to make the expedition shorter, and that’s when we started these flash expeditions."

This demand for constant internet connectivity during an expedition is a common theme for G Adventures, but the