Women's Travel Market: Retreats the Growing Trend
Sudbury, ON (PRWEB) May 14, 2007 -- Canada's largest outdoor adventure company for women, Wild Women Expeditions (WWE), notes a shift in the women's market towards personal growth and wilderness retreats.
The most recent figures indicate that the all-chick adventure leader may have spotted the latest trend in the women's market. The company has been tracking sales trends since 1991 and running comparisons of early registrations at the April 30th mark. "Sales of our retreat packages are up 50% from last season; while paddling, cycling and hiking adventures are holding at 2005 and 2006 levels. We did see this coming" reports Beth Mairs the company's founder and director.
Back in 2004, Mairs joined the ranks of businesses turning to Google Adwords to boost their online presence. Through this promotion tool, users select key words that will trigger showing their ads. Google also provides its users stats on which search strings are most popular and generating clicks. In 2004, searches under terms such as 'women's adventures' and 'women's travel' were very popular and generated a lot of new visitors to WWE's site. But by 2005, searchers under phrases like 'women's retreats' were starting to match women's travel and outstrip women's adventures. Now in 2007, for every one search under women's travel there are three people searching under women's retreats according to WWE's Google stats.
Wild Women Expeditions own web stats seems to be telling a similar story: since the launch of their 2007 season online six months ago, hits to their Retreats page are outstripping hits to their Paddling plus Hiking pages combined.
This may be part of a larger trend. According to Ken Johnson, founder of the popular site Retreats Online, the women's market for retreats has always been strong. He estimates that of his online users 75% are female. Retreats Online has a special women's retreats section and in the past 3 years he has noted an increase of 100% in traffic to that section.
While Mairs is unsure why the women's market is shifting to retreats, Johnson believes this may represent a larger trend towards personal development and spiritual growth, especially as more women find themselves stressed out and unfulfilled in the workplace. Getting close to nature is a significant part of this trend.
While the outdoor and tourism industry may have been slow waking up to Estrogen buying power, certainly personal growth entrepreneurs have always understand the feminine strength of their market. Check out any yoga studio. And Wild Women Expeditions, which has been offering retreats along side women's adventures since 1994, ramped up their retreat offering in 2006 by inviting music icon Jane Siberry as a workshop leader. This year political activist Starhawk and the singer-songwriter Ferron will be headlining.
According to Mary Beth Bond "The typical adventure traveler is not a 28 year old male but a 47 year old woman." And this summer, Wild Women Expeditions is betting that the typical adventure traveler will be looking for some yoga stretches after hard day's paddle.
Wild Women Expeditions is a unique vacation company catering exclusively to women by offering affordable wilderness adventures, retreats and getaways across Canada. They are based near Sudbury in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. WWE is entering its 17th season.
www.wildwomenexp.com
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