The setup
Exploration has always been a deeply intimate activity, meant to be experienced in person.
Or at least, that's what the collective tales of humanity have taught us. After all, the sight of a decrepit monument fallen from grandeur transports you across time and space. Imagine setting up a campsite, and moments later, a bright little bird alights on your finger — its moments like these that our ancestors shared and cherished, and somewhere in our over-urbanized Gen-Z genome, we feel this instinct more strongly than ever.
And then came 2020. Covid-19 shut the door on all this romance. The travel industry was left in tatters, and along with it, the zealous energy of a generation. A trip to the mountains? The grocery store down the street is demanding enough!
As lockdowns and protocols came and went, it almost felt like experiential travel would never recover. Globally, spirits seemed dim. And yet, we persevere. We gradually migrated our lives to the cloud, participating in everything from online meetings to online gelato-making classes.
The zeitgeist of this new normal is a blurring of the lines between the real and the virtual, and, as digital spaces augment every aspect of our lives, an interesting opportunity has arisen to redefine experiential travel for a hopeful, hybrid future.
The way forward
Blending the virtual and the real is an interesting dinner party conversation, to be sure.
But what does this look like in practice? In our opinion, there are three primary arenas that future-facing travel projects must contend with:
Continuous digital engagement
Travel projects aiming to bridge the digital divide can no longer work with narrow definitions of what kinds of experiences can be delivered. A digital-first approach means prioritizing content creation alongside on-ground activities, targeting demographic niches with highly specialized content, and investing and growing social media communities to stay relevant.
But continuous digital engagement in travel means more than just being an influencer. Outdoor experiences are visceral, but they are infrequent. And even an endless stream of content grows old some day. However, what never grows stale is learning. Each and every unique outdoor experience, whether it be tiger spotting, hiking, or learning about a location's endemic ecology, is a treasure trove of teachable moments. Creating educational courses around these moments is the most surefire way to create continuous digital engagement, by keeping the community engrossed with content that materially enriches their lives.
Immersive Virtual Spaces (VR/AR)
As the relentless graphic card industry continues to push the boundaries of what is possible on a computer screen, virtual spaces represent a way for people to escape the confines of their real-world circumstances. The last two years have seen many projects explore this notion, and it will be interesting to see how this space evolves. Imagine sitting around a virtual campfire, sharing stories as a virtual wolf howls in the distance. Concepts like these would once have been dismissed as idle fantasies. Now, they are very real, and very achievable.
With VR and AR, creators can really push the boundaries of convention. A true-to-life simulation of a frantic gypsy rushing through a forest tracking a tiger, or an AR tool for nature enthusiasts to project flora and fauna into their real environment and study them, or even something as ambitious as a historically accurate VR scene of a life in the day of a commoner in a 16th century Indian kingdom — these are all possibilities that boggle the mind and excite the spirit, and will, very soon, capture the imaginations of audiences across the world.
A World at Play
Gamification, based on first principles from game theory and behavioural sciences, has long been used by apps to improve user experience and create a competitive pull for users to stay hooked. Reward systems, leaderboards, and mini-games are all tried and tested strategies that work whenever they are implemented.
It is shocking, then, that we haven't seen these kinds of systems permeate experiential travel. Outdoor experiences, being highly visual and immediately compelling, seem a natural place for gamification to be used to craft richer moments for users. By turning users into players, a travel project can cement stronger bonds, turning their ecosystem into a place where people keep coming back.
Where we are right now is the best place we could be. As the industry lies dormant, there is ample room for experimentation. To add to that, 2021 presented us with a glimmer of hope, in the form of a resurgence in travel during the inter-lockdown phases. Revenge travel is a very real phenomenon, and OnTheProwl has been following its progress very closely.
The plug
At OnTheProwl, we are building an ecosystem that will bring experiential travel to the forefront of the digital age. The platform we're building will enable travel creators and local experts to create thriving communities, travel collaboratively, and effortlessly sell virtual and real-world travel products and services.
The Academy, the first step on our journey, is a learning platform where travel creators will create stunning online courses to help explorers around the world upskill across multiple niches. These niches include — History and Culture, Adventure, Wildlife, and Sustainable Living.
We have been onboarding talented creators in experiential travel to teach the world their passions! In our cohorts, talented creators from across the world will work with us to build exclusive travel content, explore a digital future for experiential learning, and engage with global audiences like never before!
For our part, this is us investing in continuous digital engagement as a core vertical of the future of the outdoors experiences industry. Over time, as we scale, we plan to add more features allowing creators to coherently mix online and offline sessions, create long-form episodic content, and plan collaborative events in tandem with their audiences.
More than the sum of its parts
The ecosystem we envision is an essential collection of digital-first services that will redefine the way we both produce and consume travel content, and thus, the way we reconcile with our collective history and engage with the world around us. Of course, there are infinitely many ways to get to that point, and the following broad tenets frame OnTheProwl's (highly opinionated) perspective on what is to come:
Horizontal integration — Birth of a Democratized Ecosystem
First we build the technology to access and grow digital-first revenue streams. Then we eliminate barriers to entry in the industry by enabling any travel expert to run a travel business from their fingertips. When all of this is in place, a travel creator will be able to turn their personal brand into a self-sufficient and scalable travel business.
Niche operators will no longer be subject to the hegemony of large players that control demand and siphon away earnings. Down the road, this asymmetry will lead to better market conditions for operators themselves, whose additional independence will manifest in better end-products for the consumer. To that end, we will align ourselves actively with the democratization of the industry.
A record of our experiential heritage
Experiential travel is decentralized by nature. You connect with fellow travelers along the long road. The associations you form along your journey are as unique as your fingerprints themselves. Every venture into the outdoors is a personal adventure, and every personal adventure is a drop in the ocean that is our collective heritage.
A prospective solution: an immutable ledger on the blockchain, equipped with smart contracts for travelers to monetize their unique journeys through life, with the goal of preserving tales of exploration for all of posterity.
With some innovative token engineering, the protocol could even handle funneling proceeds towards sustainable movements and conservation, as a native feature. Think about that for a second. Maybe take a minute. (More on this in a future article)
The conclusion (finally!)
The years to come will be definitive for the future of the experiential travel space. For our part, we have a clear idea of how we wish to ride this wave. Most importantly, fresh professions emerging from the remotest parts of the world will give rise to a whole new economy. As the pandemic wanes, experiences will make a glorious comeback, and the future will be undeniably generous to those that manage to seize the moment.
If you liked the content and approach of this article, stay tuned to this space. There's more on the way from our team as we continue to explore and learn.
OnTheProwl
Change the way people travel!
