Skift Take
Context is a scholarly tour business betting that digital marketing will let it replicate its model profitably worldwide. Other experiential tour businesses will watch with a skeptical (but hopeful) eye.
Lots of small travel companies get relatively small amounts of fundings. By that measure, news that Context Travel, a provider of walking tours and activities based in Philadelphia, took in a $5 million in investment from a private equity firm isn't that remarkable.
But the deal becomes more notable when it is seen as being representative of something a bit larger: Many travel companies are wrestling with how to meet the demand for a curated selection of experience-heavy travel at scale.
It is easy for travel industry types to quote surveys suggesting that more people -- especially luxury travelers and millennials -- prefer experiential travel over checklist or package tourism. There's a similarity to how to these middle- and upper-income people tend to buy travel instead of physical goods.
It's also easy to point to a growing demand for educational experiences, from the doubling of museums in the past couple of decades to the explosion of niche, skill-oriented workshops like cooking classes.
But it is harder for travel companies to figure out how to build a business addressing this perceived market with significant volumes.
Context Travel, which is a tour operator and not an aggregator, has faced a similar challenge of getting much bigger with its selective approach to tours, which emphasize very small groups "for the intellectually curious traveler." It's a problem that several of its tour o
