Join your fellow delegates for a Day of Adventure, brought to you by Toscana Promozione Turistica. Get ready for adventure and meet new colleagues as you explore the incredible areas in and around Montecatini Terme. For the early DOA departures, a light breakfast will be served.

Join the ATTA team for a special overview designed to help you make the most of your time at the Adventure Travel World Summit, and learn about maximizing ATTA Membership year round. Meet members of the ATTA team, get tips on how to connect with many of the 700 attendees and learn how to navigate the agenda including Marketplace, MediaConnect, workshops, unconventional sessions, special evening events and more. All delegates are encouraged to attend, learn how to best utilize your time at the Summit and follow up through ATTA membership year round.

Meet your peers, hear opening remarks, and help commence the Adventure Travel World Summit 2018.

David Quammen opens the Adventure Travel World Summit 2018 with a personal reflection on our conference theme – Wellspring – and its meaning for our community. Adventure Travel is more than a business, of course; it is an aspiration, a set of responsibilities, and an ideal, with deep power to attract people from all walks of life. Quammen will share his own perspective on Adventure Travel as (in his case) a fundamental requirement of his four decades of work in journalism and books. He’ll also urge us to consider the big question: Why do people crave adventurous experiences in remote places? The reasons are many, but among the most fundamental, perhaps, is an itch to return to “the source” in some sense – the source of a river, the source of civilization, the source of humanity’s relationship with nature. The source of vitality and inspiration, the wellspring, that renews our joy in life and our sense of stewardship in this fragile world.

Quammen, as a noteworthy explorer and author whose works have explored the interconnections of science, human history, and nature, from the Congo to Komodo to the Russian Arctic and beyond, shares stories and advice for the people gathered together in Tuscany. He offers words of wisdom and inspiration for a community of strivers who are more than stewards of conservation, science, and culture, although this is certainly one of the most valuable gifts they offer. Beyond this, they routinely must provide inspiration to their guests, awakening in their travelers – millions of people around the world – to see themselves and their relationships with each other and the Earth differently. To be successful in this is perhaps our industry’s greatest opportunity and challenge, our true purpose which is so urgently needed at this moment in time.

Network with your fellow delegates during this coffee break. 

Street Wisdom is based on the simple but powerful proposition that the environment and people around us are full of wisdom that is largely overlooked or ignored. This is a guided, immersive urban walk using a mix of psychology, mindfulness, and cognitive science. Facilitated by “Street Wizard” and ATTA media delegate, Anja Mutic, this session gives participants the skills to see the streets and people of Montecatini Terme in a new way and help reveal signs, clues, and answers to important business and life questions. Watch this video to learn more about this unconventional educational experience.

This session occurs twice and is limited to 12 participants. If you can commit to attending, open Summit Connections in a browser window or with the ATTA Events mobile app, locate the exact session time and date you’d like to attend, and click “+Add to Schedule” to sign up.

The October 16th Marketplace features 100 inbound tour operators and accommodations from around the world and provides a focused setting to connect with potential partners, hold business meetings and promote your brand. A global delegation of buyers (outbound tour operators, wholesalers and travel advisors) and media (editorial and influential) attend our marketplace as it facilitates quality introductions and product development discussions. 

Destination representatives are invited to engage in a discussion about accelerating smart sustainability solutions. In recent years, the adventure travel industry has witnessed many innovations helping individual travelers and companies move toward more sustainable behavior, but less attention has been devoted to how destinations can implement them on a large scale. With cutting-edge examples of smart destination design, visitor management, and strategic investment priorities, this session illustrates how destinations can accelerate toward a more sustainable future and become living labs for new and more effective management models. Speakers reveal challenges and discuss potential solutions so delegates are ready to engage in implementation.  

This session is especially designed for destination representatives (regional and national) but is open to all tourism professionals who are interested in topics such as destination management, strategy, and sustainability. It will be repeated.

Moderator

Watch and ask questions as the ATTA audience’s favorite digital media expert, Sree Sreenivasan, critiques ATWS delegate websites, social sites and more — LIVE! Learn how to improve your blog or social media interactions to raise visibility, traffic, and revenue. Sreenivasan calls these “CAT scans” because in the medical world, CAT scans look at healthy as well as unhealthy tissue in order to examine and diagnose what lies beneath the body’s surface. During this fast-paced, fun session, volunteer delegates willing to put their brands on display will receive constructive, actionable tips from both Sreenivasan and the audience.
This session is designed for companies, brand and destination representatives, and media with an interest in increasing their social media presence and fostering a community of online followers. It will be repeated.

What Adventure Travel Can Do to Embrace Increasing Interest in Inclusive Tourism

According to the World Health Organization, 15 percent of the world’s population has an access need, and with the increased interest in adventure tourism comes travelers from a wider variety of backgrounds, ages, and abilities. Are adventure travel businesses prepared to effectively communicate with these potential customers, host them in destinations around the globe, and welcome them on multi-faceted trips? Leaders and experts in accessible tourism introduce this session with background and market research, and travel providers explain how they’re incorporating adaptability as an ethos, using innovative outdoor gear, and embedding critical customer experience elements into their business design to reflect real travelers’ needs. This session also provides a hands-on workshop for tour providers and destination planners to outline the logistical elements of increasing accessibility into their programs and, therefore, growing their customer base. As stated in the 2013 UNWTO Recommendations on Accessible Tourism: “If the tourism industry wants to maintain and develop quality, sustainability, and competitiveness, it must support and develop tourism accessible for all, because accessible tourism benefits everyone.” Delegates will walk away ready to implement the next steps in becoming more inclusive for everyone who wants to travel.

This session is for travel providers (tour operators, travel advisors, outfitters, and guides) and destination developers. It will be repeated.

How Private and Public Sectors Can Secure a Sustainable Future for Adventure Destinations

Adventure tourism alleviates overtourism by distributing visitors from crowded iconic destinations to undeveloped regions in need of economic growth. However, the adventure travel industry must devise proactive strategies to mitigate additional overtourism problems in the near future. How do visitors impact communities and the environment, and how can private and public sector entities can work from a common vision for the long-term health of the planet and industry? Speakers will share recent research findings from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and Euromonitor about current and future overtourism forecasts followed by a case study from Jordan on how the destination is coping with capacity management issues in some of its iconic attractions. In this focused, facilitated roundtable session, destination-focused and high-volume travel industry decision-makers will receive compelling data they can use to help build awareness in their companies and agencies to combat the overtourism riskin the adventure sector. They’ll also establish working relationships with key leaders from other destinations and establish high-level approaches for managing adventure tourism growth.

This session, limited to 120 participants, is for both the private and public sector, primarily destination-focused and high-volume travel industry decision-makers. It does not repeat. If you can commit to attending, open Summit Connections in a browser window or with the ATTA Events mobile app, and click “+Add to Schedule” to sign up.

Moderator

The October 16th Marketplace features 100 inbound tour operators and accommodations from around the world and provides a focused setting to connect with potential partners, hold business meetings and promote your brand. A global delegation of buyers (outbound tour operators, wholesalers and travel advisors) and media (editorial and influential) attend our marketplace as it facilitates quality introductions and product development discussions. 

How young leaders’ innovations and solutions are disrupting the adventure travel industry.

While most of the discussions about younger generations entering the travel marketplace have been on their behavior as travelers, it’s important to recognize Millennials are also very entrepreneurial and a source of ideas that have already transformed the travel world. With their new ways of thinking about traveling and natural relationship with technology, young leaders in the industry are developing market offerings and solutions to complicated challenges. Discussing the importance of entrepreneurship and showcasing select innovation projects, this session’s speakers will invite delegates to celebrate the original and clever thinking this young generation brings to the industry and explore how some of these specific products and solutions can enhance existing company and destination offerings in the adventure travel domain.

This session is designed for destinations, tour operators, and media. It will be repeated.

Network with your fellow delegates during this coffee break. 

Humans are born with an innate instinct for connection. Tribal culture, albeit altered in modern times, is alive in all of us. Yossi Ghinsberg, through his incredible experiences in the Bolivian Amazon and deep connection with the Uchupiamonas people, provides a fresh perspective on the concept of connection and its role in helping us find solutions to the complex environmental and human problems we face as a society today. Through Yossi’s inspiring stories, which have recently been brought to audiences around the world in the 2017 movie, Jungle, we see the power of interconnectivity in nature. Realizing that these connections contain the seeds of innovation and collaboration, they hold the potential to bring about the changes we need to see in our world. Urging us to see and act in our everyday lives to rely on our ultimate global interdependence, Yossi shares a moving vision for the adventure travel community.

Join the Adventure Travel Conservation Fund (ATCF) for their annual breakfast meeting to talk conservation, and be the first to hear about the 2018 grant winners! This will also be a great opportunity to network with over seventy-five ATCF member organizations who have prioritized protecting the places we love to travel. Please RSVP.

Join social media strategist Sree Sreenivasan for a one-hour practical walkabout around Montecatini Terme. Get ready to take photos and start posting. Come with an Instagram and/or Facebook account and the apps on your smartphone, or just bring along your smartphone and learn the latest tricks and tips — and get some exercise, too!

This session occurs twice and is limited to 25 participants. If you can commit to attending, open Summit Connections in a browser window or with the ATTA Events mobile app, locate the exact session time and date you’d like to attend, and click “+Add to Schedule” to sign up.

Happy Maps offers a path in the quest to find knowledge-driven solutions to complex problems through the prism of making people feel happier. This program reconsiders conventional GPS mapping approaches by emphasizing the need to consider human emotion, memory, and senses. Daniele Quercia, computer scientist and founder of the Good City Life, presents a different way to think about places and mapping by focusing on optimizing happiness rather than time or resource efficiency. This session is designed for destination representatives, travel providers, and media interested in increasing access to off-the-beaten-path routes and expanding a well-rounded customer experience through the happiness lens. It will not be repeated.

Access innovative thinking about destinations and the connection between nature with the everyday life of people and society. Two Western European case studies showcase how advancing destination growth and place design can be achieved through creative and sustainable nature-smart approaches that are attractive for contemporary markets. One case highlights a particular story of how a relationship with nature can be the foundation of a destination’s strategy and align with efforts to restore the disturbed relationships between humans and bees. The second story reveals thinking about how nature can be woven into the design of places such as buildings, neighborhoods, and outdoors spaces. This green space design reintroduces nature back into everyday life as a way to tackle air pollution problems and facilitate a reconnection with nature within the context of urban and suburban living environments, thereby driving visitor interest and increased occupancy.

This session is designed for destination representatives, consultants, development agencies, and media. It will not be repeated.

Join social media strategist Sree Sreenivasan for a one-hour practical walkabout around Montecatini Terme. Get ready to take photos and start posting. Come with an Instagram and/or Facebook account and the apps on your smartphone, or just bring along your smartphone and learn the latest tricks and tips — and get some exercise, too!

This session occurs twice and is limited to 25 participants. If you can commit to attending, open Summit Connections in a browser window or with the ATTA Events mobile app, locate the exact session time and date you’d like to attend, and click “+Add to Schedule” to sign up.

How Adventure Travel Professionals Can Implement Climate Action in Their Businesses and Beyond

In the past ten years, adventure travel businesses have approached climate change challenges and the opportunities it presents in several ways. In this panel discussion and workshop, two experienced leaders share how their businesses have joined with a global community of climate activists to reduce their negative impacts and support traveler awareness, initiative, and self-motivation to take action. With deep experience in climate-action programs, these speakers share what they have learned about partnering with like-minded companies and reducing carbon emissions, eradicating single-use plastics, and achieving net-zero waste in their trips. They offer insight on how other business leaders can tackle plastic, waste, and carbon reduction. This session includes a workshop focused on transformation into a climate-conscious business and building traveler awareness with an eye toward climate action.

This session is designed for adventure travel tour operators. It will be repeated.

Network with your fellow delegates during this coffee break. 

Explore big-picture shifts in demographics, technology, geopolitics, and consumer values, and how they are converging to shape tourism’s future. With consumer experience at the heart of success, travel brands with consumer-centric strategies will become the most relevant players.

Alongside these macro-level shifts, rapid technological innovations are reshaping our industry’s traditional approaches to product, marketing, and distribution. As consumers continue to find new and easier pathways toward their desired experiences, adventure industry businesses stand to gain. How will players like Google, Facebook, and Amazon influence the adventure space? How will new partnerships blossom between small businesses and new innovators? In this dynamic moment, an opportunity for strategic thinking presents itself, one in which businesses can consider how best to integrate into this emerging landscape.

Hear from panelists at the forefront of analyzing and understanding the macro-level changes reshaping our industry — Luke Bujarski of LUFT and Caroline Bremner of Euromonitor — then learn from Caroline Boone of Airbnb about the opportunity adventure businesses have to join a global movement focused on empowering entrepreneurs. Digest this information with Arnie Weissmann, editor of Travel Weekly, as he leads a conversation capturing specific takeaways relevant to your business. This session includes time for questions from the audience.

Moderator

The October 17th Destination Showcase features 30+ destinations and puts a spotlight on these exciting adventure travel destinations to connect with potential partners, hold business meetings and promote the adventure opportunities accessible through a unique assortment of nations, regions and cities. A global delegation of buyers (outbound tour operators, wholesalers and travel advisors) and media (editorial and influential) attend our marketplace as it facilitates quality introductions and product development discussions. 

Street Wisdom is based on the simple but powerful proposition that the environment and people around us are full of wisdom that is largely overlooked or ignored. This is a guided, immersive urban walk using a mix of psychology, mindfulness, and cognitive science. Facilitated by “Street Wizard” and ATTA media delegate, Anja Mutic, this session gives participants the skills to see the streets and people of Montecatini Terme in a new way and help reveal signs, clues, and answers to important business and life questions. Watch this video to learn more about this unconventional educational experience.

This session occurs twice and is limited to 12 participants. If you can commit to attending, open Summit Connections in a browser window or with the ATTA Events mobile app, locate the exact session time and date you’d like to attend, and click “+Add to Schedule” to sign up.

Destination representatives are invited to engage in a discussion about accelerating smart sustainability solutions. In recent years, the adventure travel industry has witnessed many innovations helping individual travelers and companies move toward more sustainable behavior, but less attention has been devoted to how destinations can implement them on a large scale. With cutting-edge examples of smart destination design, visitor management, and strategic investment priorities, this session illustrates how destinations can accelerate toward a more sustainable future and become living labs for new and more effective management models. Speakers reveal challenges and discuss potential solutions so delegates are ready to engage in implementation.  

This session is especially designed for destination representatives (regional and national) but is open to all tourism professionals who are interested in topics such as destination management, strategy, and sustainability. It will be repeated.

Moderator

People are interesting, complex, and nuanced, which means when they are fully engaged, they bring their gifts and talents to adventure organizations with delight and joy. It also means leading, engaging, motivating, and supporting people from a front-line or senior leadership role can be challenging and complicated, yet people-centered leaders make a huge impact on organization results. This session encourages us to immerse ourselves in the fundamental essentials of leading well: understanding the self, building a trust-based relationship, organizing and enlivening a team, holding and reinforcing accountability, and designing a workplace fit for human life. This session also provides practical tools that leaders can use upon returning to the workplace so employees and colleagues can thrive.

For those participating in the ATTA Leadership Studio on October 19, this session serves as a helpful introduction and language builder for the full-day workshop, which addresses issues related to leading across difference and diversity and inclusion issues.

This session is designed for both existing and emerging leaders in any organization. It will be repeated.

What Adventure Travel Can Do to Embrace Increasing Interest in Inclusive Tourism

According to the World Health Organization, 15 percent of the world’s population has an access need, and with the increased interest in adventure tourism comes travelers from a wider variety of backgrounds, ages, and abilities. Are adventure travel businesses prepared to effectively communicate with these potential customers, host them in destinations around the globe, and welcome them on multi-faceted trips? Leaders and experts in accessible tourism introduce this session with background and market research, and travel providers explain how they’re incorporating adaptability as an ethos, using innovative outdoor gear, and embedding critical customer experience elements into their business design to reflect real travelers’ needs. This session also provides a hands-on workshop for tour providers and destination planners to outline the logistical elements of increasing accessibility into their programs and, therefore, growing their customer base. As stated in the 2013 UNWTO Recommendations on Accessible Tourism: “If the tourism industry wants to maintain and develop quality, sustainability, and competitiveness, it must support and develop tourism accessible for all, because accessible tourism benefits everyone.” Delegates will walk away ready to implement the next steps in becoming more inclusive for everyone who wants to travel.

This session is for travel providers (tour operators, travel advisors, outfitters, and guides) and destination developers. It will be repeated.

Network with your fellow delegates during this coffee break. 

This year’s Adventure in Motion film competition warms up with a light-hearted and interactive musical creation. Adventure veteran and historian Jean-Claude Razel, of Alaya Expedições, will tap into every delegate’s creativity with this imaginative, improvised musical creation. Join in the fun then sit back and enjoy a viewing of this year’s film competition finalists, submitted by your colleagues and selected by our voting committee and consumers. The session will conclude with a live audience vote to select the 2018 grand prize winner.

After the last event of the day, the night is yours to explore the beautiful streets and surroundings of Montecatini Terme.

The Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA) and its community works to break down big-picture challenges into achievable goals — achieving milestones and roadblocks along the way. In a pilot program called Adventure Accelerators, fueled by complimentary colazione (espresso, tea, and Italian pastries), delegates energized by an early-morning brainstorm will accelerate the ATTA community engagement and provide input on the following initiatives. Delegates passionate about one or more of these topics should sign up to be on the front lines of a creative and fast-paced hour focused on dreaming big and creating solutions to some of the industry’s (and the Earth’s) most pressing issues.

Initiatives and Group Leaders:

Climate Action – Russell Walters, ATTA
Eliminating Plastics – Chris Doyle, ATTA
Guide Standards – Dan Moore, Pandion Consulting & Facilitation
Indigenous Tourism – Dené Sinclair, The Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada
Women in Leadership – Amy Brown and Alice Gifford, ATTA
Young Leaders – Gergana Nikolova, ATTA

Each Accelerator group is limited to 15 delegates and they do not repeat. If you can commit to attending, open Summit Connections in a browser window or with the ATTA Events mobile app, locate the exact Accelerator group you’d like to join (linked above), and click “+Add to Schedule” to sign up.

MediaConnect sessions give you the opportunity to connect one-on-one with the Summit’s official media delegates — an impressive and diverse group of international travel journalists, editors, and influencers that are seeking inspiration and story ideas from you. During each of the two sessions, seize the opportunity to pitch relevant stories or campaign ideas related to your adventure travel business to selected official media delegates during timed appointments. Be sure to do your homework before attending; preparation and research are key to your success at MediaConnect. 

Specific details about the session format and further tips for success coming soon.

How Adventure Travel Professionals Can Implement Climate Action in Their Businesses and Beyond

In the past ten years, adventure travel businesses have approached climate change challenges and the opportunities it presents in several ways. In this panel discussion and workshop, two experienced leaders share how their businesses have joined with a global community of climate activists to reduce their negative impacts and support traveler awareness, initiative, and self-motivation to take action. With deep experience in climate-action programs, these speakers share what they have learned about partnering with like-minded companies and reducing carbon emissions, eradicating single-use plastics, and achieving net-zero waste in their trips. They offer insight on how other business leaders can tackle plastic, waste, and carbon reduction. This session includes a workshop focused on transformation into a climate-conscious business and building traveler awareness with an eye toward climate action.

This session is designed for adventure travel tour operators. It will be repeated.

How young leaders’ innovations and solutions are disrupting the adventure travel industry.

While most of the discussions about younger generations entering the travel marketplace have been on their behavior as travelers, it’s important to recognize Millennials are also very entrepreneurial and a source of ideas that have already transformed the travel world. With their new ways of thinking about traveling and natural relationship with technology, young leaders in the industry are developing market offerings and solutions to complicated challenges. Discussing the importance of entrepreneurship and showcasing select innovation projects, this session’s speakers will invite delegates to celebrate the original and clever thinking this young generation brings to the industry and explore how some of these specific products and solutions can enhance existing company and destination offerings in the adventure travel domain.

This session is designed for destinations, tour operators, and media. It will be repeated.

Network with your fellow delegates during this coffee break. 

If you want to go where no man or woman has gone before, go to the inside. The next frontier of human exploration does not just lie “out there.” It also lies within ourselves. The coming decade will show us insights into what it means to be human that will surpass what we have learned in the last century. We are standing on the brink of the next human revolution where success will not be “more” but “better.” Not more customers, more stuff, or more experiences. But better. The rules of the game are changing. And no one knows what the future rules will be. If you want to create your own rules – this is your time! The future is hyper-complex and hyper-connected. In this enlightening plenary session, one of the world’s brightest futurists is here to teach us not only how to navigate the future, but how to shape it (and maybe even pass “the alien test”). Get ready for a fun, mind-blowing, and highly inspirational joyride into the future of adventure travel.

MediaConnect sessions give you the opportunity to connect one-on-one with the Summit’s official media delegates — an impressive and diverse group of international travel journalists, editors, and influencers that are seeking inspiration and story ideas from you. During each of the two sessions, seize the opportunity to pitch relevant stories or campaign ideas related to your adventure travel business to selected official media delegates during timed appointments. Be sure to do your homework before attending; preparation and research are key to your success at MediaConnect. 

Specific details about the session format and further tips for success coming soon.

When he discovers the world’s oceans brimming with plastic waste, a documentary filmmaker investigates the pollution’s environmental impacts. Join us for a special screening of this 2018 winner of a Social Impact Media Award. Watch the trailer.

Running time: 1 hour 40 min. This screening will not repeat.

Watch and ask questions as the ATTA audience’s favorite digital media expert, Sree Sreenivasan, critiques ATWS delegate websites, social sites and more — LIVE! Learn how to improve your blog or social media interactions to raise visibility, traffic, and revenue. Sreenivasan calls these “CAT scans” because in the medical world, CAT scans look at healthy as well as unhealthy tissue in order to examine and diagnose what lies beneath the body’s surface. During this fast-paced, fun session, volunteer delegates willing to put their brands on display will receive constructive, actionable tips from both Sreenivasan and the audience.
This session is designed for companies, brand and destination representatives, and media with an interest in increasing their social media presence and fostering a community of online followers. 

People are interesting, complex, and nuanced, which means when they are fully engaged, they bring their gifts and talents to adventure organizations with delight and joy. It also means leading, engaging, motivating, and supporting people from a front-line or senior leadership role can be challenging and complicated, yet people-centered leaders make a huge impact on organization results. This session encourages us to immerse ourselves in the fundamental essentials of leading well: understanding the self, building a trust-based relationship, organizing and enlivening a team, holding and reinforcing accountability, and designing a workplace fit for human life. This session also provides practical tools that leaders can use upon returning to the workplace so employees and colleagues can thrive.

For those participating in the ATTA Leadership Studio on October 19, this session serves as a helpful introduction and language builder for the full-day workshop, which addresses issues related to leading across difference and diversity and inclusion issues.

This session is designed for both existing and emerging leaders in any organization. It will be repeated.

Network with your fellow delegates during this coffee break. 

Since 2005 when he first addressed the adventure travel community at the Adventure Travel World Summit in Seattle, Washington, Shannon Stowell, now ATTA CEO, has been sharing his heart and his vision for this industry. Over the years he has helped lead our extensive global community and returns to the stage with the most relevant message for this time: we must join together and put everything we have into using adventure travel as a force for good. Tourism — a $2.3 trillion USD industry according to Euromonitor — is now accessible to unprecedented waves of people from all walks of life. Commercial adventure travel is the gateway into nature and local communities for many and because of this, we have an important opportunity: through our experiences, we must influence how people interact with the environment and each other. The connection our industry has to travelers is the key to scaling conservation to the massive degree required to change the course of life on Earth, and never before has this been more important.

In this inspiring and heartfelt call to action, Shannon calls on each of us to take specific measures in our business endeavors and through our communication channels to alter consumer behavior around the world.

Rising Together: A Workshop for Leaders Committed to Equity and Inclusion

ATWS Delegates are invited to participate in a one-day leadership workshop following ATWS in Tuscany. Limited to 100 people. Attendance to the Studio is not included in Summit registration. Learn more, see the full day agenda, and access registration.