Originally published in Forbes
By Larry Olmsted | June 17, 2025
Active travel is hot, and this segment of tourism has been booming ever since the pandemic. Actually, it was already growing before that, but during Covid-19, more people started doing more things outside, walking, hiking, biking and generally being active, and much of this newfound passion for the outdoors, nature and exercise has stuck around. As a result, most of the top players in the active travel field are reporting ongoing record bookings year after year since the pandemic, and most are adding many new trips, activities and destinations. So even if you do not already think active travel might be a good choice for you, consider these top 10 active travel trends for your next great hiking or cycling vacation
This is a niche I personally love, and one that I have followed closely for more than a quarter century. I’ve biked, hiked, skied, paddled and trekked all over the globe, and I know the best companies, especially in the luxury active travel space, and I know what they have been doing differently in recent years. I speak regularly with executives of the best outfitters, as well as people who use them and travel agents who book them for clients, all so I can remain informed about all that is going on, and these are the most important recent trends I have identified.
Top 10 Trends In Active Travel
More Boat-Based Active Trips
This has probably been the single biggest shift, one that was largely pioneered by Backroads, the country’s largest, best-known and longest established luxury guided active travel tour operator, for more than half a century. Backroads led the charge into using luxury European river cruise ships, which hold far fewer people but offer more space than most ocean-going cruise ships, and the big appeal is the fact that guests do not need to pack or unpack during the trip, whereas traditional active travel itineraries change hotels about every other day. In addition, if the weather is bad or you are just tired and want to opt out of an active day, you have the option of participating in the normal guided shore excursions the cruise lines offer. This proved so popular with guests that the company expanded to both river cruises in other continents and ocean cruises, and most recently added an active cruise trip to the Galapagos Islands, a Bucket List spot for many.
Other top players in the luxury space, especially Butterfield & Robinson and DuVine, have followed suit. I’ve written about the special appeals of this particular niche here at Forbes so you can get a lot more detail. Instead of cruise ships, DuVine has focused on small groups and luxury-chartered boats and I wrote about one of their great trips here at Forbes as well.
More Single Hotel Trips
The popularity of not packing and unpacking that led to the boom in boat-based trips above also fueled a surge in trips entirely based out of single lodging, rather than moving hotel to hotel. Backroads launched a series recently (currently for hiking only) and calls these “Home Base” trips in desirable spots like Southern Italy’s Puglia. The Cycling House, a Tucson-based biking specialist, has been doing it for a long time, both in Arizona and international destinations such as Italy and Spain, usually using a private villa. DuVine has some shorter 4-day cycling trips based at standout culinary and luxury lodging such as Troutbeck in New York’s Hudson Valley, Glen Gordon Manor in Virginia horse country and Blackberry Farm, a legendary Relais & Chateaux property in Tennessee. DuVine also offers a slate of private villa-based cycling trips in Tuscany, Provence, Mapa and Mallorca.
But the best example I know is Explora, an exceptional family-owned adventure lodge company in South America. Explora began in Chilean Patagonia with an award-winning eco-friendly luxury lodge and staff of expert, in-house, full-time guides, offering guests a dizzying array of varied activities during their stay, along with excellent food and wine on an all-inclusive basis. Explora has done it so well that the company has grown to multiple locations across Chile, Peru, Argentina and Bolivia. They now even do Iceland. I have visited their properties in Patagonia, the Atacama Desert and on Easter Island, and recommend them all heartily. For travelers wanting to experience the Incan ruins of Peru in an active way I can’t imagine better option. Read more about Explora here.
More Self-Guided Active Travel
One of the biggest things that separates luxury active hiking or biking vacations from simply going backpacking or bike packing is the packing part. On these luxe trips your luggage is moved for you from place to place, so if you hike it’s just with a day pack of layers and some water, and if you bike there are no cumbersome heavy panniers weighing you down. On top of this, there is usually a guide and support vehicles. But more and more travelers are choosing to go without the guide and support vehicles, while keeping the luxury of a detailed and well thought out itinerary with carefully selected routes, often the same kind of special tours, meals and activities set up along the way, and of course, the luggage transfer. All the higher end companies also have assistance phone call away if your bike breaks down or you get lost or such. Doing it this way is high-end self-guided, and one of the biggest advantages (besides being much cheaper) is that it essentially makes every trip a custom private one, so you can go when you want and just with your choice of traveling companions, rather than picking a scheduled departure date for a group trip with strangers.
At the high end of the active travel luxury spectrum is Butterfield & Robinson, known as the top white glove operator and the one that has been doing these trips longer than anyone, sixty years in 2026 (I just wrote about their special 60th Birthday slate of trips here at Forbes). B&R was also the first to specialize in true luxury self-guided trips, and my wife and I did one for our anniversary, just the two of us in Burgundy, and it was fabulous. They offer a lot more than most companies do for self-guided, such as VIP private experiences and stellar included meals along the way. At the more budget friendly end of the spectrum is Macs Adventure, a very large and well-established UK-based operator that recently opened a U.S. office and has grown very quickly in the American market. Macs does nothing but self-guided, with hundreds of global hiking and biking itineraries, and offers a more no-frills version, with an itinerary of selected lodgings, luggage transfers, and a standout app that provided detailed route maps and turn by turn directions, but no meals (beyond breakfast) or activities. It is perfect for self-starters who want to do their own exploring and choose their own dining but still have the infrastructure of a waiting hotel room and waiting luggage. Macs offers an incredible array of hiking and biking trips all over the world and is a great value proposition.
In between these two extremes are companies such as Trek Travel and VBT Biking Adventures for cycling, Country Walkers for hiking, and highly expert, local, one country specialty active travel operators like Tourissimo in Italy and WalkJapan in Japan. Tourissimo calls their version “concierge self-guided” because so much local expertise is provided along with luggage transfers. I have recently traveled with both of these last two companies and highly recommend them. Both offer regular fully guided scheduled trips but have self-guided options with more support and activities included along the way. Read my story “Why Your Best Hiking or Biking Trip Might Be Self-Guided Active Travel” here at Forbes.
Crossing An Entire Country Under Your Own Power
I’ve seen a big surge in coast-to-coast or border-to-border trips, such as cycling across the entire width of Italy, from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean. Several tour operators offer this, including one of my favorites, DuVine, a very high-end luxury operator with special focus on wine and gastronomy. There is also Bike It! Tours, a very local tour operator with a bike shop in Bellagio, on Lake Como, that offers this trip on a custom basis just for your group and is a great value with deep local knowledge. Another Italy specialist, Tourissimo, does an 8-day cycling trip across the island of Sardinia from coast to coast. Trek Travel, another one of the big higher-end global hiking and cycling tour operators, offers several cross-country bike trips, in Italy, France, Spain, even the entire United States. They are the only high-end company doing a fully-support transcontinental U.S. trip, but it takes almost eight weeks.
More manageable is biking or hiking across England, offered by Wilderness England (8 and 13 days respectively). In recent years countries such as Bhutan and Liechtenstein have created new hiking trails that run the full width of their countries, and I was the first foreigner to tackle a walk across Liechtenstein. The Liechtenstein Trail is just 45-miles long and the national tourist board offers several 6-7 day packages with lodging and luggage transfers along the way, plus extras such as an adventure pass that includes attractions, wine tastings and such, and daily free lunch. This is one of the most affordable self-guided adventures out there, from $1100 per person for 3 & 4-star lodging (their national rating system, not Forbes Travel Guide) or $1650 with luxury hotels. I did a section of the trans-Bhutan trail, and many top luxury tour operators such as Backroads, Butterfield & Robinson and MT Sobek do roughly weeklong trips, and G Adventures has more affordable 10–11-day outings, but the entire trail is 250 miles and takes almost a month. Bhutan’s tourist board offers package with home stays and guides for those who want to tackle the whole thing.
Wales has a walking path running the entire length of its coast, border to border. Launched in 2012 it was the first country to offer a marked walk of its entire coastline, 850 miles. It is broken into themed sections and some travelers return over and over to do the entire trail in manageable chunks. Many companies including Macs Adventure offer luggage transfers and support for self-guided trips, while Backroads, Wilderness England and others offer weeklong more luxurious guided trips. Central America is the narrowest part of the Western hemisphere, and one of the most popular trips is a hike across Costa Rica from the Atlantic to Pacific, which has been dubbed the “Camino de Costa Rica” after one of the most famous hikes in the world in Spain (see next entry). But this one is just 174-miles and can be done in 15-16 days, while MT Sobek, one of the world’s oldest and best-established active travel companies, offers a fully guided 10-day “best of” sampler.
More Iconic and Pilgrimage Routes
Most active travel hiking is going to a region like the Dolomites or Scottish Highlands and doing day hikes, then returning to a hotel. But increasingly, travelers are seeking to do part or all of more iconic continuous routes. Arguably the most famous of the multi-day hikes readily doable in a single American-length vacation trip (unlike the Appalachian Trail or such that take months to complete) is the Tour du Mont Blanc, a legendary circular hike that circumnavigates the highest peak in the Alps while going through Italy, France and Switzerland all in roughly 10 days (there are slightly longer and shorter versions). I did the TMB, as it is known, and it was simply the best hiking trip of my lifetime and one of the best trips I have done, period. Not many top operators offer the TMB in its entirety, and the best choice I know of is MT Sobek, another veteran adventure company with an excellent reputation. G Adventures, a big company known for great value proposition also has the TMB. Macs Adventures offers self-guided TMB itineraries. The Trans-Bhutan Trail is the world’s newest pilgrimage route, but doing the entire thing takes a month, so G Adventures offers the most affordable turnkey (Bhutan is pricy and logistically complicated) sampler, a 12-day trek. Other top iconic multi-day hikes include the ascent of Mt. Kilimanjaro (I’ve done it and frankly found it underwhelming and would not recommend) and the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in Peru. Up and coming iconic hiking routes can also be found in in Tuscany and New Zealand.
Pilgrimage treks, originally for religious purposes, have also exploded in popularity, none more than Spain’s Camino de Santiago, which has become the next big thing in hiking trips. How popular is it? Those who complete most of the Camino under certain rules get a certificate, and in 1984 the number that achieved that was just 423, while 40 years later in 2024, it was more than 495,000. However, this centuries old pilgrimage trek morphed repeatedly with invasions, occupations and threats, and there are no less than seven official Camino rotes today, some of which include portions of France and/or Portugal. Some are also much less crowded than others. Most are basically a walk across Spain, taking 30-40 days, and all are broken into more palatable portions and these segments are popular with active travel companies. For a luxury spin on the Camino, Backroads recently introduced a new and outstanding segment on one of the less crowded routes in the Basque region of Northern Spain, with fabulous food and coastal scenery, from Bilbao west. G Adventures offers multiple options from 8-10 days. Macs Adventure offer dozens of Camino itineraries, all self-guided, including the whole thing on multiple routes.
Another less famous home of pilgrimage hikes is Japan, which has several mixing Shinto and Buddhist temples, and this is something WalkJapan specializes in and does very well, with expert guides and amazing food. In fact, only two pilgrimage routes on earth have achieved coveted UNESCO World Heritage status, one being Spain’s Camino and the other Japan’s Kumano Kodo, a favorite of Walk Japan customers.
More Gravel & Trails
“Gravel grinding” has been the fastest growing segment of cycling for the past few years, exploding in popularity. This basically entails riding a slightly heavier duty road bike with slightly wider tires, still more efficient than a mountain bike, on gravel and dirt roads rather than pavement. The appeals are a greater variety of places you can go with a more natural wilderness aesthetic, and far fewer cars, the bane of many cyclists. Gravel grinding is popular worldwide, but the Mecca of the sport is in the same place as the Mecca of regular road riding, Tuscany, with hundreds of miles of its famously unpaved “white roads,” or strade bianche, especially through the Chianti wine region. But while gravel riding has soared in participation, few of the biggest active tour operators have begun offering it. The one major exception is Trek Travel, with more than a dozen gravel itineraries in the U.S. and worldwide.
KC&E Adventures is a top boutique cycling and hiking adventure company that does some scheduled group trips but specializes in small private groups and offers a great combination of local knowledge and value, especially for the private tour segment which tends to run very expensive. Founder Collin Daulong says, “We’re seeing increased interest in gravel riding and light mountain biking on double track, not only for the sense of adventure but also because it feels safer and more approachable. It’s ideal for people with general biking experience who still want that ‘out there’ feeling without technical barriers.” KC&E regularly does gravel trips in New England, Italy and Iceland, and has done custom in Croatia and elsewhere. Other smaller specialty operators offering gravel trips include Tourissimo, a great choice for Tuscany, and the Cycling House, here and abroad.
A lot of people love mountain biking, but even fewer luxury companies do mountain bike trips in the way road and gravel active vacations are offered, in part because more technical skill is required of guests, an entirely different fleet of expensive bikes is required, they tend to break more, and it is harder to support these trips in high style, as the vans that cater to cycling trips cannot go on off-road trails. However there has been some growth, and DuVine, one of the most luxurious companies, with a food and wine focus, recently added its first mountain bike trip, to South Africa. KC&E Adventures also does a lot of mountain bike trips, especially in Vermont, Iceland and Arizona’s Sonoran desert.
More E-Bikes (And Less E-Bikes)
Electric assist bikes, or e-bikes, have small battery powered motors that reduce the amount of human effort but still require some pedaling, and these have exploded in popularity. I remember the first time I went on a cycling trip where anyone rode an e-bike, and it was a Butterfield& Robinson trip to Japan about 10 years ago. It was new then but now it is standard for very major tour operator to offer this option, and on most trips I’ve done since, there have been people on e-bikes, though it has remained a minority, maybe 10-20% of participants. An e-bike is a great equalizer that lets less avid cyclists join friends or family who are better conditioned and can put children or grandchildren and multi-generational groups on equal footing. It also opens up more challenging destinations and rides that might be too long to too hilly are now doable with help of e-bikes.
While I am still powering my own way and have never opted for this, I’ve seen lots of people of all ages who have and love it. In fact, the popularity of e-bikes on trips has gotten so high that there has been some backlash from traditional cyclists who somehow feel threatened or that it is a less pure approach, and one of the biggest active travel companies, Backroads, which was an early adopter of offering e-bikes, has released an entire series of e-bike free trips. These are called “Unplugged,” which the company describes as “designed for cyclists who want to experience a ride together—with all its ups and downs—under their own power.”
But while the no e-bike trend is limited, the use of e-bikes has spread to practically every active tour operator doing cycling, even self-guided specialists like Macs Adventure and the tour operators that tend to attract harder-core cycling enthusiasts such as Trek Travel and DuVine. Escape Adventures, a large active travel company I have traveled with and thoroughly enjoyed, but lower-priced not quite as luxurious as some of these others, offers a slate of only e-bike group trips and says, “Our E-bike (both road and mountain bike options) vacations are created specifically for both first-time cyclists and experienced bike enthusiasts who want to bring their partners who don’t bike nearly as much.”
Women’s Only and Family
Women-only has been a big growth category both within the major tour operators and companies focused solely on this niche, such as Wild Women Expeditions and AdventureWomen. I wrote about this trend recently here at Forbes. Backroads has long led the way in this category with a lot of women-only versions of its standard luxury catalog of hiking, cycling and multi-sport trips, and goes further than anyone in also offering trips sorted by age, including adult-only, and trips for families in several categories, for those with kids and teens, teens and 20s, 20s and beyond. DuVine doesn’t do women-only trips at this time but does offer family departures. Butterfield & Robinson has been the leading high-end luxury active travel company for almost six decades but just added the women-only category last fall. Cycling House has a lot of women-only scheduled trips.
Hut to Hut or Lodge to Lodge
The Dolomites have long been the best spot in the world for doing hut-to-hut hike and bike mountain bike (and ski) trips in a luxury way, at least if you are the type who after a long day outdoor enjoys a Wine Spectator award winning cellar with huge verticals of Super Tuscans in your “hut.” The Dolomites have an incredible selection of high-altitude rifugios, or restaurants, many of the them stunningly gourmet and many with overnight accommodations, dotted throughout the region’s peaks. This selection of mountain lodgings of high caliber is unparalleled on the planet. Macs Adventures offered self-guided trips staying at rifugios here and several companies offer longer trips including a night or two in rifugios, including Wilderness Travel, but for a more immersive guided hut to hut itinerary here, the top choice is MT Sobek.
But this kind of travel is expanding beyond the Dolomites, and Backroads just added a broad slate of Lodge-to-Lodge trips around the world, including Peru, Nepal, the Pyrenees (Spain/France border) and the Mont Blanc/Chamonix region of the Alps combining Italy, Switzerland and France in one stunning trip. Lodges are a little more elaborate than mountain huts, essentially small rustic hotels in adventures places, and some are extremely luxurious.
Norway is another country with a rich tradition of mountain cabins, and upscale tour operator Up Norway, a company doing just this one country, has just introduced a slate of these hut-to-hut trips, cherry picking special locales.
The U.S. has several more rustic hut-to-hut systems, originally focused on backcountry skiing in winter, then expanded to mountain biking. The most famous are the 10th Mountain Division and San Juan Hut systems, both in Colorado, but the newest is the Aquarius Trail Hut System, five solar powered huts strategically set along a 190-mile route through some of Utah’s most scenic backcountry and best mountain biking trails. Aquarius offer both self-guided and fully guided mountain biking trips, the latter in partnership with Escape Adventures, a company I had a great trip with in Nevada.
More Active Culinary Travel
Doing exercise and burning calories goes great with guilt-free indulgence in great food and drink, and many of the best biking and hiking destinations are foodie paradise, from Italy to Japan. I’ve often described bike trips in Italy as riding from one gelato to the next, and I just did a hiking trip in Spain’s Basque region where food was a huge part of the appeal, with daily lunches at tapas bars and San Sebastian being one of the world’s great culinary destinations.
For this reason, there has been a spate of food-centric active travel offerings, and both DuVine and Tourissimo (an Italy active travel specialist) offer annual series of chef (and sommelier) led bike (and Tourissimo also does hiking) tours, often with famous award-winning chefs. DuVine has a heavy food and wine focus on all of its “regular” trips as well and is the rare company that includes wine at every meal because it is such a focus of the company that “vine” is in its name, plus they have the one-hotel immersions noted above to food-centric resorts such as Blackberry Farm, TN. South America’s Explora, covered above under single hotel stays, has a big focus on regional cuisine and the best wines of Chile and Argentina, also fully included in its rates. WalkJapan is a specialist in hiking trips across Japan and makes incredible meals and foodie education a centerpiece of its great guided trips, I just traveled with them for the first time and was wowed. They also have an even more immersive series of dedicated gastronomy walking trips. Butterfield & Robinson and Backroads both regularly feature standout meals, often at Michelin-starred restaurants or private chef dinners, as well as cooking classes on many trips. Backroads offer specific “Active Culinary Hiking & Walking” tours in Provence and Tuscany, which take the normal food focus a step further and add market visits, more cooking, wine and olive oil tastings and more. This is the tastiest of the top 10 active travel trends for your next great hiking or cycling vacation.
Since 1992, we at Escape Adventures have been blessed to shape and lead adventure travel vacations through some of the most awe-inspiring natural destinations in the world. Each successive season, our passion for adventure grows through memorable moments with our guests. Fresh air, faith, fitness and friends are the building blocks for our ventures, the treasured experiences that keep us moving forward. For those of you who have trekked and traveled with us over the past quarter century, Heather and I express our sincerest gratitude. The memories are priceless.
