Guidance for the tour guide: Adventure Central gives niche tour operators an e-commerce assist.

• Author: Caley, Nora
• Position: Company overview

People who run adventure-tour companies know how to steer baby boomers down the Yangtze River in China, how to guide a family up a mountain, and how to find the right spot for helicopter skiing. But they don't know how to set up websites that enable would-be travelers to book these tours online.

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That's Denver-based Adventure Central's niche. The company, founded in 2003, helps adventure travel companies take reservations online, accept payment and manage their travel inventory. "They have websites but not e-commerce-enabled websites," says Dick Schulte, chief executive officer. "You can look but you can't book."

He estimates that 70 percent of leisure airline, hotel and car reservations are booked online, while 2 percent of adventure or experiential travel is booked online. "I think we could all assume the great benefits of e-commerce have been applied to every market possible, but I don't think that's true," Schulte says.

The adventure travel industry is a $40 billion industry, but most of the operators are small tour companies, he says. Adventure Central provides a Global Distribution System (GDS), which serves as the infrastructure to store travel inventory (for example, how many seats are available on a specific day's rafting trip) and reservations and credit card information. With the Web-based Adventure Central platform, the companies don't have to buy hardware or install software from a box. When they sign the contract, Adventure Central helps the tour operator migrate their data onto an offsite platform.

"They don't have to tell their customers anything," Schulte says. "Their customers are on the websites saying. 'Wow, look at all these cool trips, and here's the Book Now button.'"

Adventure Central has helped 40 customers book a total of 11,000 transactions worth $7 million. Schulte says tour operators, who pay Adventure Central a fee for every booking, often see reservations increase 5 to 10 percent within the first three months of signing the service agreement.

In January the company received a $3.5 million investment from Allegis Capital, a venture capitalist based in Palo Alto, Calif. Adventure...