G Adventures claims to have created a new market for travel to Australia with its Australia and New Zealand program, which is now in its second year.

Founder Bruce Poon Tip told Travel Today the swift success of the program has “stunned” the adventure travel company.

“It’s the fastest start up program we’ve ever had,” he said. “In the first six months we had to go from 10 to 40 people on the road to deliver the program for us.”

As a result, the operator doubled capacity and programs for its second year.

The main markets for the itineraries are in Europe and North America, but they is also faring well domestically, Poon Tip revealed.

“There’s a lot of domestic – more than any other region,” he said. “There are a lot of Kiwis coming to Australia and a lot of Aussies going to New Zealand – it’s a market we never really anticipated would be so strong.”

The demographic for the ANZ program is slightly younger than G’s usual demographic of 30 to 50, coming in at an average of 25 to 45.

But, more importantly, the people that are taking the tours are people that weren’t coming before, according to Poon Tip.

“There’s been a bit of market share captured, but overall we’ve created a market for Australia and New Zealand that didn’t exist before – it’s a different type of traveller.”

He put this down to G’s emphasis on offering travellers a “more authentic, interactive” experience rather than the hop-on, hop-off style of itineraries also popular with travellers to Australia and New Zealand.

Poon Tip promised significant changes to the program in its next incarnation, with details to be revealed in September.

“The stuff we have in the pipeline for Australia is crazy stuff,” he said. “When we first came in, we got locked out of so much, but now the doors are open, we have got so much more opportunity to do what we want to do.”