Contiki's Gen Z Playbook for Tours

06.06.2024 - 20:33 / skift.com / Travel Experiences / Jesse ChaseLubitz

Contiki, a travel company focused on young adults, is eyeing expansion in Asia, Latin America, and Africa as it adapts to the post-pandemic travel landscape.

CEO Adam Armstrong said in a Skift interview that Contiki has a strong presence in Australia, New Zealand, and Europe and sees the potential to double or triple its business in these new markets. Increased demand from Australians and Americans for cost-effective and less congested destinations in Asia is driving the shift in focus.

Africa has emerged as a significant success story for Contiki, particularly among travelers in their late 20s and 30s, while Latin America remains a work in progress, Armstrong noted.

The CEO also highlighted changes in traveler preferences, with a temporary shift back to longer trips post-pandemic now leveling off. Group sizes are expected to return to pre-pandemic levels in 2024, and younger travelers are requiring more support to integrate into group environments.

Contiki plans to invest in AI-powered tools and decarbonize, too, Armstrong said.

Skift: Your strongest markets are Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. Are you looking to expand your presence in other parts of the world?

Adam Armstrong: Outside of Europe, we’ve been making a concerted effort to build our business in three other regions: Asia, Latin America, and Africa. We’ve been operating in all those places for a while. But we see huge potential for us to be much bigger — we could double or triple our business there. So there’s a lot of marketing activity going for us into those three destinations to try and persuade people to try them out as well.

We probably would have done it before Covid. It’s just delayed. We’re seeing generally more demand for Asia from Australians and Americans. Asia’s up by about 40%. So we just want to jump on top of that. It’s also more cost effective than Europe for the traveler, it’s less congested. So there are a lot of pulls towards that. 

I don’t think we’ve nailed Latin America yet. We’ve got some work to do on our product range to appeal to younger passengers. We launched in Africa about 18 months before COVID, and coming into 2020, we were going to have an amazing year. We are now getting huge demand, especially from our older clientele – so late 20s to 30s. It’s a big success story.

Skift: In 2021, you pivoted from large-scale trips to smaller ones. How has Contiki adapted its travel offerings to cater to the evolving preferences of young travelers in the post-pandemic era? 

Adam Armstrong: Yes, our offerings have changed a bit but also consumers have changed a bit as well. It’s kind of a mixture of the two. I don’t know if it’s chicken or the egg, which one came first. What we saw coming out of the pandemic is