Vielha, Catalonia — Crisis has become a permanent feature of the operating environment for adventure tour operators, panellists at the Adventure Travel Trade Association’s AdventureELEVATE Europe 2026 conference said on May 20, with security protocols, cash reserves and rapid decision-making now treated as core competencies rather than contingency planning.

The panel at the Palai d’Esports de Vielha in Val d’Aran brought together operators from three markets shaped by different forms of disruption: Nada Raphael, co-founder of TourLeb in Lebanon; Ayman Abd-AlKareem, co-founder of Experience Jordan Adventures; and Michel Durrieu, CEO of French outdoor accommodation group Huttopia. Katie Crowe, co-founder of Luminar Collective, moderated.

Raphael set out the Lebanese position bluntly. “I was born in crisis. When you are born in Lebanon it is always a crisis, from nature and geopolitics. It has become normal for us. We always have to re-adapt,” she said.

Abd-AlKareem said the gap between political shocks in Jordan has compressed. Where downturns hit every two or three years in the past, they now arrive annually, leaving limited room for recovery. He told delegates the pandemic forced his hardest single decision: letting go of 28 staff in a single day and retaining six. Acting any later, he said, would have meant bankruptcy and no severance for departing employees.

Durrieu offered a working definition of the term itself. A crisis, he said, is a security or operational disruption that remains in the news cycle for more than seven days. Anything shorter is a manageable incident.

Raphael said TourLeb has built a network of local contacts on the ground to assess conditions in real time, treating embassy advisories as background noise rather than operational guidance. “At the end the only people who know what is happening in the field are the people who are there,” she said.

The company tells clients it can guarantee 95% of their security because it knows every operator on the ground. When the conflict spread to Lebanon earlier this year, TourLeb had 18 groups in the field. Some travellers chose to stay, others to evacuate. Raphael said the country’s regional split made the picture more complex still: while the south was at war, the north remained calm enough for sightseeing.

TourLeb has formalised this intelligence function into a unit it calls The Watch, with a designated team member monitoring news and WhatsApp groups daily. Each tour has its own WhatsApp group through which key events are communicated, a system Raphael said builds confidence among guides and travellers in the field.

Abd-AlKareem said Experience Jordan Adventures now holds 16 months of cash reserves, far above the three-to-six-month industry norm. The buffer covers staff salaries for a full year with no business activity.

“I can then secure the staff for one full year with no business, which frees up time in my mind to deal with the crisis. I don’t have to worry about the team,” he said. The company also avoids celebrating strong years, waiting until a second consecutive good year before treating performance as a trend.

When Experience Jordan made its pandemic-era layoffs, every departing employee received three months of severance. Abd-AlKareem said the transparency of that process, combined with regular communication, prevented resistance from those leaving and rebuilt trust with those who remained. Trust, he said, has to be earned over time and across different situations.

Durrieu said the worst decision is no decision. He cited Huttopia’s response to the Paris terror attacks, when he chose to proceed with a meeting of 10 tourism ministers from UN Tourism rather than postpone, judging that communication about the impact on the sector mattered more than the optics of caution. Forty-eight hours later, with security still uncertain, he allowed a protest to be organised in the area, a risk he acknowledged in retrospect.

On security decisions at Huttopia’s campsites, Durrieu said wildfires originate in the surrounding forest rather than from camping activity. Operators have only a few hours to decide whether to evacuate guests through the forest or instruct them to stay put, with the call typically made alone.

“Usually people are trying to save infrastructure without thinking about the people,” he said. The order, he argued, must be security of customers, then security of staff, then assessment of the impact on business and infrastructure.

All three panellists warned against over-communication during incidents. Durrieu said anything operators say will return to them through social media, and that the priority during the Paris attacks was getting accurate information to tourists already in the city and to families abroad rather than commenting publicly.

Abd-AlKareem said transparency with trade partners at the start of a crisis is non-negotiable. “It is hard to rebuild after you lose it. You must stick to your values during hard times,” he said.

Abd-AlKareem reported 95% cancellations in March, but said bookings from September through the end of the year are now filling. The speed of the Middle East rebound, he said, is what keeps operators going during quiet periods, which he and his team spend on outdoor activities and team check-ins.

Raphael said TourLeb has resisted pressure to scale up despite demand, opting to stay small and use freelancers to flex capacity. The company runs a community initiative called Hand in Hand, buying goods from southern Lebanon and distributing them to families in need during each new crisis.

Durrieu pushed back on the framing of the wider conversation. The media, he said, is amplifying a perception of permanent crisis that does not reflect the operating reality. “Life is adventure. Life is not crisis. We have to think about solutions before being confronted with a crisis: this is key for tourism,” he said.