G Adventures says it is seeing an increasing number of bookings coming in from new and lapsed agents.
UK and EMEA managing director Brian Young claimed agents were booking G Adventures because it was the operator with the most tours on sale from the restart.
He said: “Our advantage coming out of Covid was that we had so many tours on sale; it put us in a really good position.
More: G Adventures boss hails return of regular booking curve
“Consumers were increasingly considering a tour because of the small group sizes, the reassurance they offer and the fact we still have protocols in place. It gave them the confidence to travel – and we were the operator that had the availability.
“So we really opened up the market and are now seeing names of independent agents popping up in our daily sales that we’ve either never seen before or haven’t seen in a long while,” he said.
Young said constant agent training throughout the pandemic and a recent consumer advertising campaign that drove people to book with their local travel agent, had also helped boost its trade sales.
We did loads of advertising at train stations with a call to action to book through an agent, which has really helped drive the business,” he said.
Young was speaking in the week that G Adventures operated it 10,000th tour since the restart.
“This is a big milestone for us,” he said, adding that more tours would be reinstated soon with the reopening of Japan in October.
The adventure operator has just added tours in Bhutan to its programme and said the minute restrictions were lifted to Thailand and Vietnam, sales of tours to those countries had “rocketed”.
“Asia used to be our number-one destination. It dropped down but it’s coming back now,” said Young.
Europe, which entered the top-five destinations for G Adventures during the pandemic, has remained popular.