This morning I stumbled onto this article on the Portfolio website: When Newspapers Get Lazy. The author goes on a rant about how newspapers have gotten lax in their fact-checking. In the article he criticizes a WSJ article that (correctly!) refers to the Adventure Travel Industry as a $75-$100 Billion market. Here is the ingenious back-of-the-envelope reasoning the author uses to discredit that market calculation:
Let’s put those numbers in perspective: according to its annual earnings report, Walt Disney’s global revenues from all its parks and resorts in fiscal 2008 totalled $11.5 billion. So I’m pretty sure that Doyle was talking in millions, not billions: 10,000 people each spending $10,000 will add up to $100 million. Which means that the WSJ is three orders of magnitude off.
Did you just try to make a case that the worldwide market for adventure travel is approximately 9% of Walt Disney’s revenue? Really? And you write for a business magazine?
Maybe the faulty logic is particularly egregious to me because I spend so much of my time thinking about the adventure travel industry, but if the author had taken ten seconds to Google Adventure Travel Market Size he would have seen a page full of resources referencing a market size in the billions.
Suggestion – if you’re going to call out the WSJ on their fact checking and “lazy journalism” do ten seconds of research to back up your claim that their numbers are off by three orders of magnitude.
Hi Tyson, if you can point me to any credible studies showing the non-mainstream-tourism adventure travel industry to be a $100 billion (ish) business, I’d much appreciate it.
Cheers,
Felix
By: felixsalmon on December 10, 2008
at 12:10 am
Felix -
Thanks for your response. My post was meant to be funny, but in rereading it I see it could be construed as mean – so I hope you don’t take offense at my weird sense of humor.
On to your question. I actually think the Adventure Travel Trade Association is a pretty reliable source of information, and I assure you Chris Doyle actually uses the number $75-$100 Billion. Much of their research requires a fee and I can’t link to it. They are the source I typically reference.
If you’d like a second opinion one reasonable resource is this Xola Consulting report: http://www.xolaconsulting.com/Adventure%20Travel%20Industry%20Growth%20Statsv2.pdf
Here is the relevant paragraph:
The question, ‘How many firms participate in the “adventure travel” industry?’ is not a simple one to answer. Previous estimates range wildly, with no consistency of study method or measurement technique. For example, a 1998 Forbes article claimed that the 8000 U.S. companies packaging tours for adventurers generated approximately $7 billion in 1997. A Wall Street Journal article published in May, 2003, estimated the market at $245 billion. A World Travel and Tourism Council report indicated that “eco tourism,” with its many similarities to adventure travel, contributed $154 billion in worldwide receipts in 2000 and is growing at 20% annually.
So yes, wide range of estimates but all are in the Billions. I’m gonna stick with the ATTA numbers.
I’ve put a lot of work into a proforma and business plan that assumes the market is much bigger than $100 million. I’m praying the ATTA estimate is the one closest to reality!
Best,
Tyson
By: Tyson on December 10, 2008
at 1:52 am