Multi-day tours are having their moment — and have been for a while. The category is currently experiencing a boom, thanks to a combination of the shift to digital discovery and booking channels and greater customer demand for in-depth, meaningful experiences.
And companies beyond the multi-day sector are catching on. GetYourGuide recently announced they’re adding support for multi-day products, for example.
“We’re at an inflection point,” said Travis Pittman, CEO of TourRadar, during the Multi-Day Track at Arival 360 | Washington, DC.
Multi-Day Track sessions explored the shift to digital, the challenges of outdated tech and brand marketing in the multi-day sector, the opportunities the growing demand for multi-day tours presents both for multi-day operators and the day tour and activity operators who work with them.
Here is a comprehensive overview of some of the key topics that are currently at the forefront of multi-day tours.
What’s In This Article:
- Tapping into the Multi-Day Opportunity: It’s About Connection
- The Digital Shift in Multi-Day Distribution: Social & AI
- Overcoming Tech Challenges: Tech That Evolves With Your Business
- Marketing Multi-Day: Leaning Into Brand
- The Opportunities for Operators: Riding the Multi-Day Wave
- Learn More About Multi-Day Tours with Arival
Note: We will be continuing the multi-day conversation at the next Arival event in Valencia, Spain. We hope to see you there!
27-29 April 2026
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Tapping into the Multi-Day Opportunity: It’s About Connection
The boom for multi-day tours has accelerated in the last five years, explained Christian Wolters, President for Canada and GM of Marketing at Intrepid Travel. “The category itself has been exploding because when we came out of the pandemic people realized the last thing they wanted was to be on a giant bus with a tonne of people,” he said. “With small groups you can have a more authentic experience, get into restaurants and smaller spaces.”
Multi-day trips are appealing to a range of travelers. There’s a demographic shift underway, as the boomer generation retires, where they are investing their newfound free time and a good portion of their savings into multi-day trips, explained Dan Christian, Host of the Travel Trends podcast.
Younger travelers are prioritizing this style of travel as well, Christian continued, driven to seek new ways of connecting amid the loneliness epidemic. “The younger generation is abandoning dating sites and they’re choosing to go on multi-day trips,” he said, citing a study by EF Adventures. “Rather than just selecting height, education, and trying to find someone using an algorithm,” these types of trips enable you to “find someone in real life you have chemistry with,” he said.
Another traveler type leaning heavily into multi-day is solo female travelers. This segment makes up nearly half of multi-day guided tours, said Christian — and they represent a significant opportunity for operators who are able to capture their attention.
“One in two women in the United States by 2030 will be childless and single. So there is a huge opportunity, and they want to spend their money on experiences” explained Katalina Mayorga, CEO of El Camino Travel, a multi-day tour company that caters specifically to “bold women travelers.”
The key, regardless of the specific niche of traveler, is that travelers are looking for meaning, transformation — and connection. And they’re finding that in multi-day tours.
The Digital Shift in Multi-Day Distribution: Social & AI
A key aspect to the multi-day boom has been a post-pandemic shift to digital discovery and distribution channels. Where 70% of multi-day distribution happened through offline channels before Covid, “we’ve been seeing a real shift to digital,” said Pittman, with AI and social media accelerating the shift.
And while social media and to a certain extent AI have typically been seen more as marketing channels, with 70-80% of Gen Z and millennial travelers beginning their travel discovery journey on TikTok and Instagram, and integrations like the recently announced Booking.com and TikTok integration, Pittman emphasizes that they are quickly becoming distribution and booking channels.
TourRadar is leaning into social commerce, exploring how to turn social from being a marketing channel to a distribution channel with their new feature, TourRadar Moments “a community-driven feature within the TourRadar mobile app that showcases rawthentic videos and photos captured by travelers.” These user-generated content (UGC) “moments” are linked directly to bookable tours.
AI is quickly evolving from a discovery to a distribution channel as well, with integrations already being announced to insert experience listings directly into AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini.
Not everyone is all in on AI, though, particularly for booking multi-day tours. Kimkim, which offers custom multi-day trips for independent travelers, found after investing in developing an AI planning tool for their customers that, while customers might use the tool, conversion was still higher for customers that spoke with human advisors.
“I feel quite confident for the future that AI is gonna be a big thing,” said Joost Schreve, CEO of Kimkim, “but there’s going to be a space next to it that’s quite different where people actually see our specialists and our human touch as a real feature.”
Overcoming Tech Challenges: Tech That Evolves With Your Business
The multi-day tours sector has been slower to develop and adopt tech solutions, in part because of the complexity of the businesses in the category.
Multi-day is “a completely different animal than anything on the day tour side,” said Susan DeBottis, VP of Adventure & Entertainment at Easol, a booking and payments platform for adventure travel and multi-day tours. DeBottis has extensive previous experience working with day tours through her former role as Chief Growth Officer at Rezdy.
“The spectrum of businesses that fall within this industry are so varied,” said DeBottis, illustrating with the example of a seven day yoga retreat in Costa Rica vs. a three week Europe trip for U.S. travelers. “What that means from a technology perspective is there’s this huge spectrum of interesting challenges to solve.”
“The problem lies in the inherent market complexity,” added Mate Kostoviski, CEO of Lemax. Even if tour operators prioritize digital transformation, they’re unable to find the right tech match affordably, explained Kostoviski. “This leads to a vicious circle where on one side there are tour operators that are lacking appropriate solutions” he explained, “and on the other side are technology providers that lack investment to be able to innovate at scale.”
However, this is changing. With the category experiencing such significant growth, “smart money is betting on this category in a big way,” said Christian, referring to increasing interest from private equity in the multi-day tour space.
And some tech companies are stepping up to the challenge. “There is no need to build anything custom these days,” said Alex Ragin, Founder and CEO of Tourseta. “Depending on what type of company you run, you just find the right solution and go with it.”
13-16 Oct 2026
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Marketing Multi-Day: Leaning Into Brand and “Niching Down”
For multi-day tours, a key element to successful marketing has been leaning heavily into their brands.
“I’m very excited to see how the big brands in travel double down on brand marketing, especially in the age of AI,” said Mayorga. “There’s gonna be a ton of AI slop out there, and I think it’s gonna be more important than ever to niche down and to double down on brand marketing, storytelling, really unique brand assets and content that you own.”
Wolters, for example, credits Intrepid Travel’s investment into branding for their success in attracting post-pandemic travelers looking for smaller groups, more authentic experiences — and, critically, a value-match for travelers looking to travel more sustainably. “Because we were already offering that product range, coupled with branding and marketing, everything aligned,” he said.
One key to successful branding is attracting the right target market. “On social, it’s all about interest,” said Pittman, explaining that companies need to “niche down” to maximize the potential of their brands.
“We have a very clear idea of who we’re speaking to and we want to be the best of the best for them,” illustrates Mayorga, describing El Camino Travel’s focus on a specific segment of women travelers interested in adventure and culture. “So for us, brand marketing has been absolutely critical to our growth.”
The Opportunities for Operators: Riding the Multi-Day Wave
For multi-day operators, the opportunity of a growing sector, with distribution and technology solutions finally getting up to speed, is undeniable. However, for day tour operators there are advantages as well — both in working with multi-day operators and in exploring adding multi-day products themselves.
“If you’re a day tour operator you need to be working with multi-day tour operators because they’re going to continue to grow at 20, 30%,” said Christian, “and you need to look at distribution opportunities.” For every destination a multi-day tour visits, there are opportunities for day tour and activity providers to offer their products and services to multi-day operators and their guests — partnerships that could represent significant opportunity for recurring business and growth.
Additionally, many day tour operators may be closer than they think to being able to move into the multi-day space. “A lot of the trips we have on the platform are essentially just day trips put together with accommodation as the central point,” said Pittman. “For the day tour operators it is not a big leap to try something small,” he said, encouraging operators to start with a three-day tour, for example, rather than jumping directly into a 10-day trip.
“It’s maybe three times harder because you have to do a lot of different things,” added Schreve, “but 10 times more profitable, especially for the segment of people that is very willing to pay a premium for an amazing experience.”
Learn More About Multi-Day Tours with Arival
This was the first time the multi-day category has been included in a dedicated way at Arival. Historically, day tours and multi-day trips have operated very differently and dealt with uniquely different challenges. But with the growth of online bookings and expanding opportunities for working with multi-day in the wider experiences sector, we thought the moment was right to bring multi-day into the fold — and we were right! The energy during the multi-day sessions at Arival 360 | Washington, DC was incredible, and everyone was super excited to be talking about multi-day tours (and talking with the many leaders from the multi-day sector in attendance!).
We will be continuing the multi-day conversation at the next Arival event in Valencia, Spain, with another content track dedicated to the multi-day sector and the collaboration opportunities between the multi-day and day tours, activities and attractions categories of travel. We hope to see you there!
Watch the full sessions on multi-day distribution and multi-day tech challenges here — available on-demand to Arival Insider Pro Access members.
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