The operator, which is owned by Holidaybreak, has sold through the agents for 15 years, although the vast majority of its bookings come direct.
However, Explore said £2m-worth of sales now come through the trade, an increase of 50% over the last four years.
Explore agency sales manager Greg Thurston added: ‘Our major aim is to get new agents to consider offering adventure tours to their traditional long-haul and touring customers, and especially to consider Explore for this purpose.
'As the market leader, we offer the widest range of soft to hard adventure of any UK operator and are happy to train individual agencies on our seven brochures, and to supply brochure stocks.’
The operator recently took a number of measures to become more trade-focused, including putting commercial agreements in place with the main consortia, setting up an agent training programme at adventuretravelexpert.co.uk and a dedicated agents’ web page at explore.co.uk/agents.
In addition, Explore will run an agent fam trip, possibly to India, this autumn.
See also:
Explore to launch new division (24/01/08)
Adventure operators report 20%+ profit hikes (29/03/07)