A Tough Trip Picks Your Friends for You

Travis Pittman, the co-founder and chief executive of TourRadar, a company that sells multi-day organized guided trips, was talking about what happens after people take a group adventure. Once people have that experience, he said, they see how well this kind of travel can work.

His explanation for the shift was short and direct. “The itinerary typically is the filter for the people who are going to be on that tour,” he said.

By that, Pittman meant that the choice of trip does much of the social sorting in advance. His example was a Kilimanjaro trek. A person who is, in Pittman’s words, “a hardcore food person who hates exercise and activity” is unlikely to choose it. He added that he did not mean to generalize.

The people who do choose it, he said, tend to be active and fit, and to see themselves as people who like adventure and the outdoors. A demanding trip, in other words, tends to bring together people who already wanted the same kind of trip.

That overlap is why, on a trek like that, Pittman said you will probably meet a couple of people who share your outlook. Pittman’s point is that the itinerary also filters who else goes.

Pittman said the broader job is to make that appeal better known. He said he wants a pop culture moment that elevates organized adventure, and he pointed to the idea of a Netflix series built around this style of travel as one example of what could raise awareness for the category.