In a follow up to OUTSIDE magazine selecting Wilderness Travel as the No. 1 Outfitter in the World in 2015, AFAR magazine has granted the adventure travel company the same honors for 2017. Readers of AFAR selected Wilderness Travel as the World’s Best Tour Operator as part of the magazine’s first-ever Travelers’ Choice Awards.
More than 10,000 votes were cast in the survey to collect readers’ travel plans and favorite travel companies. The results are in the Jan/Feb 2017 issue of the magazine and included categories like Best Country, Best U.S. State & City, Best International City and Top Hotels.
AFAR noted that Wilderness Travel has been leading travelers around the world for more than 30 years from Chile to Antarctica to tribal West Africa. Travel + Leisure has also named Wilderness Travel to its list of Top Five World’s Best Tour Operators for multiple years, including most recently in 2015.
“We’re tremendously honored to have been selected in this prestigious competition,” says Barbara Banks, director of marketing and new trip development for Wilderness Travel. “AFAR even gave us a special mention as ‘The Best Company to Take You off the Grid’—that’s what we love to do!”
Wilderness Travel recently announced its new tours for 2017, including 23 new trips among more than 200 itineraries that include hiking, small ship cruises and luxury train journeys.
Highlights include:
- Iceland and Eastern Greenland to cater to the high demand they are experiencing for arctic tourism
- Patagonia’s Wild North: Glaciers, Fjords and Peaks of the Aysén Region to visit the newest National Park in Chile
- Salta! Hikes and Wines of Argentina’s Northern Realm to explore a yet discovered wine destination and see real gauchos
- Zambia: Blue Wildebeest of the Liuwa Plains, experiencing the second largest wildebeest migration in the world, as well as the largest migration of mammals on earth, the aerial migration of millions of fruit bats
- Best of Great Britain: Hiking Wales, Scotland and the Lakes District, capitalizing on the pound’s low value against the dollar to hike the three highest peaks in Wales, Scotland and the Lakes District, as well as raising a pint in the same pub as Sir Edmund Hillary