The 7 Best Adventure Travel Companies of 2023

G Adventures focuses on providing travelers with transformative, uniquely designed, and budget-friendly travel experiences. It organizes its tours into 13 different travel styles, ranging from Classic and Family to Active and Wellness, offering travelers incredible variety. One highlight is the Local Living option, which gives participants the opportunity to stay with families in Italy, Ecuador, or Croatia.

The use of local guides, small group sizes, and the ability to change or cancel a tour up to 45 days before departure are meant to reassure travelers that they’re in good hands with G Adventures. Importantly, G Adventures trips are also incredibly affordable. You can take a quick three-day trip through Hanoi, Vietnam, for just $249 or an active 12-day trip in Tanzania for $3,899. The company offers trips across the globe, giving travelers plenty to choose from.

Community is at the heart of Adventures in Good Company. Founded in 1999, the organization provides women travelers with a space to embrace adventure and push their limits. Adventurers can search for trips by activity level (1-5), season, and type of activity. Women who enjoy active trips can participate in things like hiking, backpacking, rafting, and dog sledding. The company even offers highly active adventures that require additional training.

Many trips visit national parks such as Bryce Canyon and Zion, and there’s a hiking and backpacking journey in California’s Death Valley. There’s even a majestic trek from Anchorage to Fairbanks, Alaska, that includes time in Denali National Park. One of the organization’s standout features is its Find Your Adventure tours, trips that would be difficult to design and organize on your own.

UnCruise Adventures has received a lot of recognition for its tours, including being ranked in the top five for both Best Adventure Cruise Lines and Best River Cruise Lines in the 2022 USA Today Readers’ Choice awards. The company has a fleet of nine ships that host anywhere from 22 to 86 guests. The relatively small group size and the fact that you’re traveling with like-minded adventurers are keys to UnCruise’s journeys. Tours cater to various travel styles — solo, family, adventure — and visit some incredible destinations. Whether you’re looking to explore the Galapagos Islands or Hawaii, there’s a cruise for you. In 2023, there will even be a trip to Belize to view an annular eclipse. If you prefer winter travel, UnCruise offers a winter journey that combines an Alaska cruise with skiing.

If you’re an older traveler looking for age-agnostic adventure travel spaces, Intrepid may be the company to book your next trip through. It has hosted travelers for more than 30 years, and the company embraces the joy of travel while fostering positivity and thoughtfully engaging with the communities it visits through initiatives led by its Intrepid Foundation. In 2022, Intrepid was named among B Corp’s “Best for the World.”

Intrepid travels to every region of the globe, even Antarctica. Trips are divided into 18 themes, including Urban Adventures, Wildlife, and Short Breaks, which are great for folks seeking an impactful experience but who have a limited amount of time. Intrepid offers four travel styles for its guests, ranging from Basix, for budget travelers, to Premium. The Premium option makes adventure travel more comfortable for seniors, as it includes luggage porterage, breakfast, tipping for smaller expenses, and 24-hour in-destination support.

When exploring the natural world, it’s imperative to do no harm. Natural Habitat Adventures partners with the World Wildlife Fund to create thoughtful, unique excursions that aim to foster “conservation through exploration.” Founded in 1985, Natural Habitat Adventures leads the way in creating eco-friendly travel experiences, and in 2021, it won Newsweek’s Future of Travel award for Trips and Tour Operators.

Natural Habitat Adventures lets travelers choose from South American journeys, African safaris, and Arctic adventures, to name just a few. Trips can also be selected by area of interest so you can take part in a Climate Change Departure to see how climate change is impacting the planet, a Great Migrations tour to watch animals on the move, or a Rain Forest Tour to explore the jungle. Natural Habitat Adventures trips are great for the adventurer who prefers to explore in a small group, as the average group size is just nine people.

Black Girls Travel Too focuses on creating safe, welcoming travel experiences for Black women to help them explore the world. The most exciting aspect of BGTT is how it’s helping to build a larger community of travelers. The company creates a warm atmosphere for African American women seeking an elevated travel experience and provides them with thoughtful explanations of what to expect on their tours. Groups are kept small, and professional photographers are an integral part of the trips, taking photos of the guests each day.

BGTT’s menu of trips is small but provides good diversity. Tours range from a 12-day tour of South Africa that includes a safari and Zulu language class to an eight-day trip to Barbados to experience the country’s Crop Over festival. BGTT also runs a voluntourism trip to Barbados and journeys in India and Thailand.

Named one of the World’s Best Tour Operators by Travel + Leisure in 2021, Thomson Family Adventures continues to be one of the best for family travel. Founded in 1998, the company serves families in all their unique compositions. It offers tours geared to several different travel styles, including Cultural, Multi-Sport, and Wildlife, with destinations in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Some of TFA’s most popular tours are its Azores Family Adventure, Galapagos Multi-Sport Adventure, and Perfect Family Safari, in Tanzania.

If you’re looking to get the extended family together for something different, you can organize one of TFA’s Family Reunion adventures. Other offerings are geared specifically toward solo parents, teens and young adults, and multigenerational groups. The company also offers several custom adventures. Perhaps the company’s most unique feature is its Friends Across Borders program, which arranges meetings with local families, letting young guests hang out with kids from different cultures.