Active travel combines exercise and natural beauty with diverse cultures and cuisines. This is Norway, popular for hiking vacations.gettyActive travel has been red hot in recent years, and there are a lot of good reasons to consider this kind of vacation this summer and beyond. Several trends have come together to create a perfect storm for active travel. For starters, interest in just about every fitness pursuit, including hiking, running and cycling, has been on the upswing since the pandemic. The COVID lockdowns got Americans more interested in spending time outdoors, and this has been compounded by the explosion in wellness interest. Another big travel trend coming into play has been the growth of “experiential travel” over old fashioned laying on the beach relaxation, and active travel trips definitely allow you to experience more, both in terms of physical activity and natural beauty.But it’s not all about new trends, and I have been a fan of active travel for my entire life and have been writing about it frequently for 30 years. Personally, I love travel and I enjoy exercise and the outdoors, so in my book, combining these makes for the perfect vacation. One thing I also focus on during travel is cuisine, and if I’m in Italy I want to have gelato and if I’m in Japan I want to have karaage (Japanese style fried chicken) and if I’m in Spain I want to have jamon Iberico, and in all these cases, the pleasure of eating regional delicacies becomes much more satisfying—and guilt free—after a day of hiking or cycling and burnt calories, “earning” your dessert.Gelato in Italy is always a good idea, but especially after a day of hiking or cycling.gettyIt’s also a great pace for taking in the sights, or “Slow Down to See the World,” the apt motto of Butterfield & Robinson, the original guided luxury active travel company. Looking out a car or train window is too fast but from the seat of a bike or your own two feet you can see it all—and stop whenever something interests you.This is a big topic, so I am breaking Active Travel into three parts. This is Part One, the Types of Active Travel Vacations and who offers them. For the Best Places To Take Active Travel Vacations, see Part Two here. For Why You Should Try A Private Active Travel Trip, see Part Three here.MORE FOR YOUTypes of Active Travel VacationsWhat Is Active Travel?There are many different ways to take active vacations including niches such as white water rafting, surfing schools, yoga retreats, and triathlon training camps. But outside of ski season and winter sports, the industry typically breaks mainstream active travel down into three main categories: cycling, hiking/walking/trekking and multi-sport, all of which come in varied levels of difficulty/exertion, and some of which in turn have subcategories.In almost every case the constants are: lodging planned along the way, luggage that is moved for you from hotel to hotel so you need only carry a small day pack or light cycling handlebar bag, and well tested routes with varying choices of length and difficulty every day, usually 2-3 options. Most (but not all) self-guided trips stick to these basics, while the more common norm in active travel is guided and supported trips that add expert guides, van support along the routes, most meals and special cultural, historic or gastronomic activities (wine tasting, cooking classes, city tours, monuments, etc.). The van support lets you catch a ride if bad weather or fatigue cuts your desired effort short, lets you grab snacks or refill water bottles along the way, and is there to help change a flat tire or deal with any mechanical issues. Most active travel trips by quality companies include airport transfers and internal flights or other transportation once you arrive at the destination, with the getting there and back left up to you. Typically, there is an option to add one or more nights ats the start hotel to arrive early.Who Operates The Best Active Travel Trips? I’ll take a closer look at popular destinations in Part Two of this active travel series, but at the luxury end of the spectrum, the top companies offering guided scheduled group cycling trips worldwide are Butterfield & Robinson, Backroads, DuVine Cycling + Adventure Company, Trek Travel and EF Adventures, associated with the EF Pro Cycling team which competes in the biggest events such as the soon to start Tour de France. Tourissimo is a great cycling (and hiking) company specializing in Italy. Two high-end specialists companies that specialize in more luxurious bespoke private bespoke trips, rather than group trips with strangers, are Gray & Co. and KC&E Adventures. For those that prefer self-guided trips, which allow you to build your own friends or family group of any size without strangers and travel on whatever dates you prefer, usually at a much lower price point, the biggest player and self-guided leader is Macs Adventures, which spans a wide array of styles from bare bones to somewhat luxurious. Walk Japan offers self-guided too (but only in Japan). EuroBike is a value-oriented self-guided company covering European destinations, while at the luxury end of self-guided Tourissimo, Butterfield & Robinson and Trek Travel are the main options, though all are more focused on fully guided trips.With the exception of DuVine (which does offer multi-sport trips), all of the companies above also do hiking, and for self-guided, EuroHike is the sister company to EuroBike. Specialists that offer hiking and trekking but not cycling include MT Sobek and Intrepid Travel. A great company that specializes in one of the world’s great countries is Walk Japan, which I loved traveling with and wrote about in detail here at Forbes.All of the cycling companies except Tourissimo above do multi-sport, and so does MT Sobek.Many trips have a minimum age, while others are specifically aimed at families. Many of these companies offer women-only trips, while Backroads specializes in demographic segmentations, with offerings just for families with young kids, with teenagers, for adults only, women-only and by numerous age groups. Boat based hiking and biking trips are hot, especially on European river cruises, and active travel specialist Backroads has been a pioneer in these vacations.Photo Courtesy of BACKROADSIncreasingly, active travel trips based off boats, especially small charters and river cruises, has been a hot subcategory, allowing access to places that often cannot be reached by car and the luxury of packing and unpacking just once rather than the more common changing hotels every night or two. I dove into detail about the appeals and options for these active cruises here at Forbes. The companies that have done this really well are Backroads, which pioneered it and has the most options, Butterfield & Robinson, and DuVine, which does exceptional small ship trips. All three of these companies, along with bespoke ultra-luxury specialist Gray & Co., have won prestigious “Best Tour Operator” awards from Travel + Leisure magazine.For multi-sport trips, one unique and specialized option is adventure lodges, small hotels in top outdoor locales that have their own guides and offer a daily slate of activity options, typically including hikes, biking, horseback riding and more. The top luxury operators in this specialized space include Explora Hotels, with lodges across Chile, Peru, Argentina and Bolivia. I have been to the Explora lodges in Patagonia, Easter Island and the Atacama Desert and absolutely loved all of them, and highly recommend them for turnkey luxury single stay multi-sport adventures. Competitors with similar programs include Awasi, in Chile, Brazil and Argentina, and Beckons, a global collection that includes standouts such as the vaunted Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge in British Columbia, the Tierra Lodges in Chile and properties in Australia and New Zealand.For a variety of active travel pursuits, consider an adventure lodge such as the flagship Explora Hotel in Patagonia's Torres del Paine National Park.ExploraActive Travel Cycling VacationsGuided and supported cycling trips have been a mainstay of the active travel industry for more than half a century. The classic model has been on road bikes, but most companies now offer the option of a hybrid bike with straight handlebars and a more upright position on these rides for people who do not like the traditional drop bar “racing” road bike. More recently every top company has added electric motor assisted e-bikes as an option or upgrade that allows even people who don’t do much cycling to fully participate. Now some companies offer all e-bike and no e-bike trips, but the norm is to mix both.5-6 days is sort of industry standard and the vast majority of trips fit this, but options range from shorter “long weekend” escapes to two weeks with a handful of even longer specialized journeys.Tuscany's vast network of "white roads", or Strade Bianche, has made it the world epicenter of gravel cycling.gettyA small number of companies offer off road mountain biking trips, but the recent hot trend has been “gravel grinding,” riding slightly beefier road-style bikes on dirt and gravel roads. The dual appeals of this are more immersion in nature and far fewer cars. This is the biggest trend in cycling worldwide right now, and I recently wrote a feature about the revolution in gravel grinding trend here at Forbes.Hiking And Trekking VacationsThere’s virtually no part of the world you cannot explore on foot, from mountain trails to the vineyards of Tuscany. There is no technical difference between hiking and trekking, but the latter is often used to refer to longer or more demanding trips, especially in mountains such as the Alps, Andes or Himalayas.While there are a lot of 5-6 day hiking trips, in this space many run longer, especially if they are more circuit-focused, such as the famed Tour du Mont Blanc in the Alps or the coast to coast stroll across England. Likewise, more remote destinations like Bhutan or Everest Base Camp tend to be longer, and it is not unusual to see 10-18 day hiking trips.Bear in mind that hiking trails can only be accessed by motor vehicles when they cross roads, which limits the ability of support vans on trips powered by your feet, as there can be stretches of many miles or hours between points the van can meet you. Multi-Sport Active TravelThese trips combine different activities for more outdoor variety. There are a few that simply combine hiking and biking and are sometimes simply called hiking and biking trips, but most multi-sport itineraries adds at least one other pursuit, and these can run the gamut from kayaking to river rafting to surfing to climbing on a via ferrata route in the mountains or spelunking in caves.Alaska is a favorite for multi-sport trips which often combine hiking, cycling and kayaking.gettyMulti-sport trips are often a favorite of families because different things appeal to different people and are also a good choice for first time active travelers who are intrigued by the idea of an active vacation but are not already devoted or avid cyclists or hikers. You can try them all and then decide what you want to focus on going forward (or just so more multi-sport).