Nick Davies, managing director of Cookson Adventures, speaks to Globetrender about the evolving demands and desires of the world's wealthiest explorers.

How have the expectations of your clients changed over the past five years?

We have seen our ultra-high net-worth (UHNW) clients becoming increasingly numb from the typical luxury hotel offerings. They have stayed in the top suites at the world’s top hotels over several years and their expectations for their personal travel has changed as a result. They are looking for original, authentic and more meaningful experiences.

The experience comes first and that is front and centre of their decision making rather than the accommodation. Privacy is very important and so that often means remote destinations are more appealing. Meaning and purpose are paramount.

What emerging trends are you seeing in elite adventure travel that the wider industry hasn’t yet caught up with?

Storytelling is essential and building a narrative arc through our adventures. For example, we take immersive experiences to the next level by bringing in professional actors to deliver theatrical experiences whilst voyaging down the Nile. We have also launched a media production arm to shoot and produce short impact conservation documentaries and are soon to release our third and fourth short films. These are released publicly to widen the messaging and strengthen the impact behind some of our client conservation experiences.

Hosting is a key component of how we choose to run our trips. The delivery of a trip doesn’t just magically happen, having the person who spent months meticulously planning a trip on the ground in the same time zone ensures the trip runs seamlessly – either as an invisible trip co-ordinator in the background or as a trip leader – is a no-brainer for clients at our level. Their time is too precious to leave anything to chance. It also gives us the opportunity to be creative and come up with opportunities daily to raise the bar and provide out of the box experiences as the trip progresses.

We think rare destinations and frontier travel are increasingly of interest to our clients. There are many more countries in Africa with superb wildlife and a rich cultural heritage than the typical eight that most of the safari industry relentlessly promote.

Starbursting – creating layered programming for different members of a family or friendship group. This ensures no matter anyone’s age everyone has a personalised programme of different experiences to suit them so every guest can do what they really enjoy doing before they all return to their yacht, camp or lodge to have meals all together.

What kinds of budgets are clients allocating to truly exceptional private expeditions today?

The growth in the tech industry and the wealth transfer onto the next generation has meant that we are attracting much younger and more adventurous UHNW clients. There is a well-documented trend that these clients are more focused on experiences than luxury goods. These two tailwinds have created strong demand for our services. Therefore, we are seeing more clients committing bigger budgets to exceptional travel experiences.

Our trips average over half a million dollars and we are regularly organising seven-figure trips. More interestingly we are seeing a larger share of spend committed to creating bespoke experiences outside of the general logistical costs of accommodation, aviation and yacht charters. This is often the starting point and where we really can showcase our creativity to design something very special from the ground up personalised to them.

What are some of the most extraordinary trips Cookson Adventures is currently creating or promoting?

This December, our founder Henry Cookson will be personally guiding a small group of guests back to the Pole of Inaccessibility in Antarctica, 20 years after he achieved a world record by reaching it without mechanical means.

Only a handful of people have reached it in its history. The distance and isolation will remain unchanged for this special anniversary expedition but what’s different will be the comfort with proper camps, flight support, and polar 4x4s. It will end with the world’s most remote dinner set up, held at the foot of Lenin’s statue – the only marker for hundreds of miles in any direction. Winter 2027 dates will also be announced soon.

We’re incredibly excited about unlocking Angola. Guests can experience truly off-grid exploration in what’s still considered one of the wildest places in Africa, which is starting to open up again after decades of civil war. This journey is made up of epic road trips, ultra-scenic charter flights and a leave no trace mobile camp. Guests will traverse towering dunes that fall into the Atlantic, navigate shipwreck-littered shores and encounter extraordinary tribal cultures whose traditions endure in isolation.

For Easter 2027, we’ve partnered with Silolona Sojourns to create a once-in-a-lifetime Lost Sharks of Raja Ampat itinerary, led by two esteemed conservation experts: Executive Director, Mark Erdmann and Program Manager, Nesha Ichida from ReShark, an Indonesian organisation dedicated to the scalable rewilding of sharks and rays.

This expedition will include leopard shark tagging and tracking as well as diving to locate the juvenile sharks in the wild. It will all be filmed by the Cookson Productions team. Guests will receive a professional short documentary as a keepsake of their trip, with the short impact documentary film also being released publicly to raise awareness of the reintroduction effort.

Norway is attracting huge interest. Its remote fjords hide one of the world’s densest concentrations of Second World War wrecks, left undisturbed since the 1940s and unseen until we recently led the first manned submersible exploration of the site. This new adventure will take guests beyond the limits of conventional diving in a private submersible, with no training or decompression required, while a marine historian brings each wreck to life as it emerges from the depths.

A world-class superyacht then becomes the base for exploring the Lofoten Archipelago, with helicopters, kayaks, e-foils and jet skis at sea, and mountain biking, heli-accessed hikes and cliff-face camping on land.

Which destinations or environments do you believe will define the next frontier of elite adventure travel?

Blank spaces on the map are increasingly defining the next frontier of elite adventure travel. Our Pole of Inaccessibility expedition, for example, is designed to take guests far beyond the more familiar parts of Antarctica, into places that very few people will ever experience.

We’re also seeing strong demand for truly remote destinations where traditional luxury infrastructure simply does not exist. In these environments, explorer yachts and luxury mobile camps can be deployed to create a high-comfort base in places that remain otherwise inaccessible.

Frontier travel continues to hold huge appeal. Over the coming months, we have confirmed trips to Greenland, the Republic of Congo, Angola, Papua New Guinea and Guyana, which gives a strong indication of where this curiosity is heading.

At the same time, clients are increasingly interested in returning to countries they may already know but exploring them in a completely different way. We take them away from established tourist routes and into lesser-known regions that offer a deeper sense of discovery.

Human connection will also become more important, whether for thought-leadership groups, events, multi-generational families or friendship groups. Creating meaningful moments of connection in extraordinary settings is increasingly central to how we design these journeys.

There are also major changes afoot in space travel. Virgin Galactic and other operators are expected to make the possibility of travelling to space more available over the coming years, opening up an entirely new category of private exploration for those seeking the ultimate frontier.

For genuine explorers, there is still enormous interest in submersible exploration too. The oceans remain one of the least understood environments on Earth, with wrecks, seamounts and marine ecosystems that offer extraordinary scope for discovery beneath the surface.

Are you seeing growing demand for trips built around wellness, fitness and personal optimisation?

Yes, absolutely. Wellness, fitness and personal optimisation are now embedded in many of the trips we design, rather than treated as optional extras. For many clients, time with breathwork experts, wellness practitioners, life coaches and personal trainers is a non-negotiable part of the itinerary.

That means thinking very carefully about how each trip supports a client’s wider routine. It might be arranging a yoga session in a remote heli-accessed location from an explorer yacht or planning an anchorage so they can go on a challenging run along the coastline. These details are increasingly central to the experience.

We also work with a wide network of specialists who can become integral members of a client’s wider team, helping shape everything from daily movement and recovery to mindset, performance and longevity.

We’re creating bespoke fitness-focused journeys for both professional and amateur athletes in beautiful, off-the-beaten-track locations. Sometimes the aim is a reset in a new environment; sometimes it is to add variety to a training regime through different sports, terrain and conditions. In other cases, it is about creating the kind of challenging, multi-disciplinary journey that delivers real physical and mental reward. Scandinavia is particularly well suited to this style of travel.

How can experiences such as freediving benefit high-performing CEOs and entrepreneurs?

I think freediving is popular with high performing individuals as it requires many of the qualities they spend their careers developing from composure under pressure, clear judgement and complete focus. There is no room for distraction. Phones, deadlines and the constant noise of decision-making fall away, leaving only the breath and the ocean around you. It’s also a powerful exercise in managing discomfort calmly as you descend. That ability to remain composed under pressure translates naturally to high-stakes professional environments.

Freediving also does not respond to status. For high-performing CEOs and entrepreneurs, that shift in perspective can be both grounding and restorative, which is why we can create tailored experiences with highly qualified freedivers to join our clients in beautiful locations such as Tongo or Mexico.

Are elite travellers becoming more interested in experiences that deliberately push them beyond their comfort zones?

Yes. We’re seeing strong interest from clients who want to explore the edges of their comfort zone, learning new skills, encountering different cultures and landscapes, and doing something genuinely new for the first time.

For us, those briefs are often the most rewarding because they allow us to be highly creative. To reimagine a destination, design something that has not been done before, and shape an experience around each client’s individual appetite for adventure. Some clients want a gentle nudge; others want to be pushed much further. The key is understanding that threshold and designing around it with absolute precision.

Our most memorable journeys often happen at that edge, where challenge and discovery meet. Safety protocols remain fundamental to every stage of planning, but within that framework there is enormous scope to create experiences that feel bold, personal and transformative.

How important is access to world-leading experts, explorers and specialists in creating genuinely exceptional experiences?

They are integral. Our founder, Henry Cookson, is an explorer himself, so working with world-leading experts, explorers and specialists has been central to Cookson Adventures from the beginning. We know how to bring that calibre of expertise into a journey in a way that elevates the experience for clients, rather than simply adding a name to an itinerary.

Their value is twofold. From a safety perspective, the right specialists are essential in complex, remote environments. Just as importantly, they bring deep local knowledge, trusted networks and a level of context that makes an experience feel genuinely authentic. That combination of access, insight and reassurance is what turns an ambitious trip into something extraordinary.

How important is conservation becoming to the way your clients want to travel?

It has really been coming to the fore of our trips over the last few years, which is so encouraging to see. With younger clients, they’re more aware and willing to engage with the challenges on the ground in the destinations they are looking to visit. Conservation experiences often end up being the highlight of the trip as they can be incredibly moving for everyone involved, especially children.

Are clients increasingly looking for opportunities to make a tangible contribution to the places they visit?

Definitely, and they want to see the results. Clients no longer want to just pass through a place. They want to leave it better than they found it. So we build real opportunities into our journeys and our clients decide how far they want to go. Travellers today know their presence has an impact, and more and more of them want that impact to last.

What is driving demand for Cookson Adventures’ film production services?

Media production has always been an important element to our trips, but it has been behind the scenes. Now, we are shining a spotlight onto some of the conservation work our clients help facilitate by working with award-winning documentary makers to publicly release short impact documentaries. There is so much negativity in the world, it’s a great feeling to be able to show some positivity and how people are making a real difference.

Why are clients increasingly choosing to document private expeditions to a cinematic standard?

Expectations are now very high when it comes to filming, they want to be able to star in their own movie and share that experience with their friends and family when they return. It’s memories they can revisit again and again. However, when it comes to our documentaries they normally don’t feature in them and the focus is solely on the conservation work and the people facilitating it.

Are you seeing adventure travel play a role in succession and legacy planning for wealthy families?

Yes, we do as some conversations are hard to have across a boardroom table or at home. Put a family on neutral ground, somewhere wild with a dramatic landscape around them, and people speak more freely and feel more relaxed. Everyone is out of their usual roles, and the scale of the place puts things in perspective. We design these journeys in layers.

Experts join to guide conversations about the family's future and its legacy, and there's plenty of time between sessions to take part in shared experiences that bring the generations closer together. By the end, a family often has an understanding that no number of meetings would have produced.

What will the most extraordinary private adventures look like by 2030?

2030 is coming up fast. I’d like to think travelling on new types of hybrid aircraft that blend the best technologies from aeroplanes and airships may start to be available. They will be the new explorer yachts of the skies. Running on cleaner fuels, they'll drift low over landscapes that we currently can only see by fast-moving plane or moving vehicle. They’re also capable of operating away from fixed infrastructure so that opens up options for different landing sights.

The summer map is rapidly changing. As the heat rises in mainland Europe, regions with cooler climes and adventures at altitude will be fast replacing the traditional beach focused holiday.

As AI also becomes more prevalent and our lives become more digitally connected, UHNW travellers will look for that human connection, both during their trips and throughout the planning process. Our team already hosts most of our trips, and in 2030 that personal presence will continue to be highly valued.