Looking to Australia: How Adventure Life Develops New Destinations

There's a question we get from travelers more often than you might expect: How do you know which destinations are worth going to? It's a fair one. The travel industry is full of operators who sell places they've never visited, building itineraries from brochures and vendor relationships rather than firsthand experience. At Adventure Life, we do it differently — and our recent push into Australia is a good example of what that actually looks like.

It Starts Before You Ever Board a Plane

Developing a new destination doesn't begin with a flight. It begins with research — and one of the best research tools we have is the trade show circuit.
Every year, destination management organizations, tourism boards, and ground operators gather at events specifically designed for the travel trade. These aren't consumer travel expos.

They're working meetings: structured, efficient, and packed with the kind of detail you can't get from a website. For Australia, the flagship event is the Australia Tourism Exchange (ATE) — and earlier this year, Adventure Life's Jess Heuermann attended for the first time.

"Walking in was incredible," she says. "I've been to several tourism events and trade shows throughout my time at Adventure Life, but this was unlike anything I had experienced before."
The scale alone is striking. Over 600 operators were represented, and an equal number of buyers — travel agents and tour operators like Jess — were there to meet them. Australia being a large and diverse country, the event was organized by state and territory, each with its own section of the floor. Every section had its own café serving proper espresso, not just drip coffee. It's a small detail, but it says something about the level of care that went into the event — and, arguably, about the destination itself.

The Meetings That Matter Most

Trade shows are only as valuable as the conversations you have in them. With over 600+ operators on the floor, the challenge isn't finding people to talk to — it's knowing which conversations to prioritize.

For Jess, the most valuable meetings weren't necessarily with the largest destination management companies, though those conversations happened too. The best conversations were with the smaller, regionally focused operators who had invested deeply in one place.

"I really enjoyed talking to the operators who specialize in niche regions or smaller areas," she says. "There were operators who do Tasmania and only operators who specialize in the Great Ocean Road from Melbourne. It was really nice to get a more in-depth explanation of why those regions are so great and what these operators love about them."

That passion matters. When an operator is local to a region — when they've built their business around making one specific place shine for visitors — you're not getting a sales pitch. You're getting genuine expertise. And for a company like Adventure Life, which builds trips around authentic, in-depth experiences rather than generic highlights tours, that kind of expertise is exactly what we're looking for.

"People from Port Lincoln, from South Australia — they're really invested in making their local community a destination," Jess notes. "That added a lot of context for the type of trips we might want to put together."

The ATE conversations also raised an interesting structural question about how Adventure Life might approach Australia operationally. The country is simply too large and varied for one operator to do everything well. The emerging thinking: use a broader destination management company for the well-trodden pieces — Sydney, the Great Barrier Reef, the familiar gateways — and partner with specialized local operators for the regions that deserve more careful handling. It's an approach we've used successfully in other destinations, and Australia seems to call for it too.

Getting on the Ground

No amount of trade show conversation replaces actually going. Before ATE began, Jess joined a familiarity trip — a "fam," in travel industry shorthand — organized by local operators to show buyers the region firsthand. This is standard practice, and it's one of the most valuable tools we have for vetting a destination.

Her route took her through Adelaide, north to Port Augusta, west to Port Lincoln on the Eyre Peninsula, and back through the Clare Valley wine region. Seven days, a lot of road, and a series of experiences informed how we're now thinking about Australia itineraries.

A few highlights that stood out:
Whalers Way, near Port Lincoln, is a privately owned wilderness sanctuary on the southern tip of the Eyre Peninsula. The blowholes and sea cliffs there are dramatic — ocean meeting rugged limestone in conditions that, on the right day, produce some of the most striking coastal scenery in the country. Jess and her group ran down to put their feet in the Southern Ocean. It was cold. It was worth it.

Mikkira Station, also near Port Lincoln, is a koala sanctuary where the animals are wild — not in enclosures, but living in the manna gum trees, doing what koalas do. Visitors walk among them at a respectful distance. Even the Australians on the tour said it was among the best koala sightings they'd ever had. It's quieter than the big-name wildlife parks, and the experience is more genuine for it.

Yarnbala, near Coffin Bay, is a family-run property where the owners have been reclaiming their land back to its natural state — a critically endangered grassy she-oak woodland — and sharing its cultural significance with visitors. The walk is led by Kane, one of the owners, who knows every plant on the property: which ones are food, which ones are medicine, and what they tell you about the land. After the walk, he played didgeridoo and lap steel guitar. It's not a performance staged for tourists. It's a person sharing what he knows on land he loves. It was, for several people on the tour, the highlight of the trip.

Bunbury Station in the Clare Valley is the longest continuously operating farm in South Australia, family-owned since it was founded. The tour takes you through a working sheep shed, a church, the general store, and the manor house. The family still farms — crops and sheep, on a smaller scale — but tourism is what keeps the station alive now. For travelers who care about how a place works over time, it's quietly powerful.

Paulett Wines, also in the Clare Valley, offered an afternoon of rieslings and shiraz (and a sparkling red that's worth trying once, for the novelty) in a cellar door that feels like a cellar door rather than a theme park. Jess would have liked more time in the Clare Valley — and thinks it would make an excellent addition to a South Australia itinerary, perhaps as a final night or two before flying home from Adelaide.
 

Why South Australia Specifically?

Part of what makes destination development interesting is identifying where the opportunity is — not just "is this a beautiful place" but "is this a place our travelers will love that they haven't already thought to visit?" South Australia fits that profile.

"Most Americans thinking about Australia are thinking Sydney, the Great Barrier Reef, maybe Melbourne," Jess says. "Adelaide isn't on the radar as much — and it's a really charming city with a lot of opportunities around it. It could be the best fit for people who want something a little less touristy, a little more off the beaten path, without adding much extra travel compared to the destinations they're already considering."

Adventure Life won’t offer "Australia, but harder" — it wants travelers to see "Australia, but deeper."

The Trip We're Most Excited to Build

If you ask Jess which itinerary she's most eager to put together, the answer comes quickly: the Great Ocean Road.
The road runs along the southern Victorian coast from Melbourne, tracing some of the most dramatic ocean scenery in Australia. It's possible to do it as a day trip — and plenty of bus tours do exactly that — but Jess is more interested in stretching it into two or three days, stopping in small towns along the way, arriving at landmarks like the Twelve Apostles at quieter times before the day-trippers roll through.

"This would also let guests take their time and be at some of the places when the big bus trips aren't going through," she says. "Experience the Twelve Apostles with fewer people around."
From there, the itinerary would continue into the Grampians — a small mountain range just inland from the coast, with solid hiking and a very different landscape from the ocean. Combine that with a few days in Melbourne at the start, and you have a week-long trip that moves through city, coastline, and wilderness without feeling rushed. It's the kind of trip, she says, that she'd want to do herself. Which is, in the end, the best test we have.

The Process, Summarized

What does it actually take to develop a new destination at Adventure Life? In short: research, relationships, and boots on the ground.
Trade shows like ATE give us access to hundreds of operators in a compressed period of time and let us start building the relationships that will eventually become partnerships. Familiarity trips let us test the experience firsthand — not just the logistics, but the feeling of being there. And conversations with local, regionally focused operators give us the depth of knowledge that makes the difference between a generic itinerary and one that genuinely reflects a place.

Australia is big. It's going to take time to do it right. But the operators we met, the landscapes we walked through, and the experiences we had in South Australia make it very clear: this is a destination worth the effort.

If you're interested in being among the first Adventure Life travelers to explore Australia, reach out. We'd love to help you find your version of it.