In the good old days, before the pandemic hit, the adventure charter business was booming. Then, of course, it crashed. People still wanted to cruise to remote parts of the world, to have new experiences, but they couldn’t even get past the Covid-related travel restrictions to get to the charter boat.
Now things are starting to open up again. Indeed, EYOS-Expeditions, a worldwide company that puts together charters for “once in a lifetime experiences,” is expecting another boom. They are booking more charters for the Arctic this summer than ever before, and more for the Antarctic’s next season as well.
EYOS was founded by Rob McCallum and one other person n 2008 to put together luxury charter expeditions to parts of the world where infrastructure simply doesn’t exist. (Take a look at their video below.)
McCallum himself is a diver, a pilot, and a consultant to the UN on conservation operations; he has circumnavigated Antarctica on an icebreaker.
The staff is now 16 people full time, including a naturalist, a polar divemaster, and a Melanesian specialist for cruises to places like Papua New Guinea; they work with 300 specialists around the world.
Before Covid, EYOS put together more than 60 expeditions a year, organizing heliskiing trips to the mountains of Antarctica, submersible explorations in the high Arctic, treks with tribes in remote parts of Southeast Asia.
Now, a helicopter can take you to Emperor Penguin colonies blocked by pack ice in Antarctica or to the top of a 6,000-foot mountain at sunrise in the Northwest Passage.
For the expeditions, EYOS handles the logistics and the itineraries, working with the major brokerage and charter organizations and specializing in remote destinations. McCallum expects activity-based charter trips to grow, including surfing near isolated islands, diving on coral reefs, hiking with naturalists in remote areas along the Indian Ocean.
He also has been working as a consultant with the Damen yard in The Netherlands on a new series of expedition yachts, the SeaExplorer series. The first two were launched last year, and one is now for charter. Read more at http://eyos-expeditions.com and see the video below:
