Lindblad Wants Travel Advisors Selling More Than Its Expedition Cruises

Though Lindblad Expeditions’ $67 million majority-stake purchase of White Desert, an interior Antarctica tour company, and Echo Charlie, a brand-new adventure aviation company, represents its largest-ever acquisition expansion effort, there’s more at stake than its own internal growth.

“People are looking for something that is not just checking the box,” Natalya Leahy, Lindblad’s CEO, told TMR. “They want to engage actively with the destination. They want to have that emotional connection… White Desert and Echo Charlie are taking it to a whole different level.”

And, while the White Desert and Echo Charlie acquisition is Lindblad’s largest ever, it is not its first. The company first purchased a land-based touring company back in 2016 with Natural Habitat Adventures. Acquisitions of Off the Beaten Path, Classic Journeys, DuVine Cycling + Adventure Co., and Wineland-Thomson Adventures followed.

“We see ourselves as a platform of experiential travel experiences” Natalya Leahy, Lindblad’s CEO, told TMR. “Now we do it [offer experiential travel] by ship, by land – whether you are waking or biking or hiking – or by air, with the addition of White Desert and Echo Charlie.”

The growth opportunities for Lindblad’s full slate of brands – and the advisors who sell them – is enormous, Leahy added.

“If we look at the total market, there is over 20 million in U.S. alone. People who are demographically similar to people who already travel with us,” she said.

According to Leahy, 38,000 people sailed on a National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions ship in 2025. Some 60,000 people traveled with Lindblad across all of its brands in that same year.

“You can see this is a tiny slice. There is so much growth opportunity.”

But though these land brands represented about 33% of its revenue in 2025 (as reported by Skift), they are underrepresented on the trade side.

The main reason for this is simple. Travel advisors don’t realize Lindblad has this portfolio of brands.

“We are way underpenetrated with travel advisory community on our land side,” Leahy said. “They don’t know enough.”

Leahy told TMR that Lindblad is working to raise awareness of its land-based brands.

“They are our business partners. They know their guests and the reason we have these portfolio brands is because we really believe that the guests who travel on a National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions ship, they also may want to do a safari. They have similar psychographic and demographic profiles of guest and we have every experience to serve them.”

She added, “We should and can and will do a better job of educating our partners. If there is a reason why trade is not picking out Lindblad portfolio brands, it’s our fault. We didn’t tell the story and we didn’t give them the tools to do that, so we should do a better job.”

To help build awareness of its entire portfolio, Lindblad has tasked Lesa Bain, vice president of sales, North America, with finding ways to get the word out and get travel advisors trained on the full range of portfolio brands.

“She is now dedicated vice president who helps to educate people about our land portfolio… We’ve put the resources. We are trying to walk the talk and do a better job,” Leahy said.

Advisors interested in learning more about the full portfolio should contact their Lindblad business development manager or reach out to Bain directly.