Why Choose New Zealand Adventure Guides?
Born and bred in New Zealand, with the benefits of international experience
New Zealand Adventure Guides is 100% New Zealand owned. The background, safety record, and industry experience that forms the DNA of every New Zealand Adventure Guides’ tour goes back approximately 35 years to 1986 when the company founder Adrian Fogg began his guiding career in the North Island. As a professional guide “at the coal face’’ of adventure tourism Adrian has years of experience safely guiding people in New Zealand’s remote wilderness locations in rafts, in kayaks, on foot (both hiking tours and glacier tours), and on skis.
A love of running rivers and an adventurous spirit led Adrian overseas to guide remote and challenging rafting trips and over a 15 year period of full time guiding he worked successive seasons both in New Zealand and in other countries. While overseas Adrian worked with top international guides and for top international outfitters, and was able to bring this invaluable experience back to New Zealand with him to ensure that every guest on a New Zealand Adventure Guides’ trip receives the highest standard when it comes to trip planning, guest safety, and overall guest experience.
Experienced and safe guides
Our guides are personally selected for their experience, knowledge of New Zealand culture, history, flora and fauna, and their ability to provide safe and fun tours. They are masters at delivering a smooth and seemless experience.
Small groups
We specialise in small group travel. Our largest group size is 16 guests + 2 guides, although many of our trips are much smaller than that. We will never put our guests on a large tour bus!
If you book a bespoke tour or private group you get to choose your group size.
We’re small but mighty!
As a boutique tour operator, we intentionally stay small and exclusive: the maximum number of guests we will take on our tours is 250 people each summer season. We purposely do this so that we’re able to provide some of New Zealand’s best guides on EVERY tour, while at the same time ensuring a strong focus stays on quality control and delivering superior customer service.
A high focus on the details involved in organising every tour
As much as our guides make it all look easy, they are able to do so because they are supported by our office which makes a concerted effort to focus on the small details by “crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s.” We have established systems in place to ensure that before each departure we have all our accommodation, food, and activity bookings locked in. From our guests’ perspective it all looks easy, but all the work has been done before the trip begins so that our world class guides can shine and do what they do do best.
Low business overheads = superior guest experience
As a business we continually aim to be “light and nimble,” which essentially means we keep our overheads as low as possible to ensure that more of every dollar that each guest pays goes towards giving them an exceptional experience on our tours. Rather than spending money on overheads that our guests never see (such as office space, a sales team, non essential office support staff, etc) we are a small team working remotely from our homes. By keeping our operational costs to a minimum we have a higher budget per guest to ensure that we’re providing high quality food, hotels and wilderness lodges, and activities with third party operators (for example sea kayaking, rafting, scenic boat operators). This simply means we are able to provide a superior guest experience compared to our competitors who charge a similar price.
You save money and support New Zealanders by booking directly with New Zealand Adventure Guides
We have a lot of experience operating tours in New Zealand for well known overseas brands. We understand that guests who book with these brands have a high level of trust in them so are willing to pay a premium to select a tour from their amazing catalogs. In doing so, they are paying a 25 to 35% premium which gets funneled out of the country. If you book direct with New Zealand Adventure Guides you get the same experience and level of service as a well known international brand, but you will save a bunch of your hard earned money. 100% of your money will also stay in the New Zealand economy supporting local jobs while the taxes we pay go towards providing health care for all New Zealanders, education for our children and young adults, access to our wilderness areas, infrastructure improvements for locals and visitors alike, and many other services that benefit New Zealand and its people.
You get great value for the level of experience we provide
We are not a budget operator, nor do we ever intend to be. We operate at the higher end of the market with a minimum of 4 star accommodation. Our guests like their comforts at the end the day, including a comfortable bed in a nice hotel or lodge, a hot shower, an excellent meal, and perhaps a glass (or two!) of local wine. Each accommodation, food, or activity provider is screened and continually monitored to make sure that our guests have the best experience possible in each location we visit.
You’ll be supporting a fun-loving adventurous family!
We are a family run business. When you book a tour with us you are not only providing work to a small group of passionate guides, you will also supporting our little family of four.
