Overland Ireland says Australia ranked highly across all the search parameters, which included hiking, kayaking, sky diving, scuba diving, safari, trekking skiing, camping and rafting. Its adventure score of 45 was a couple of points ahead of the United States of America (USA) and United Kingdom (UK) which were second and third with a rounded up score of 43.
Demand for adventure travel has soared in recent years, to become one of the most popular forms of travel, with particularly strong demand from business travellers that want valuable downtime away from work, the ability to switch off from everyday life. But it is not all about thrill seeking with adventure travel now taking a "slower, quieter, smarter, and greener" form than it has been before, according to Overland Ireland, with experience and sustainability among the key drivers.
With its vast Outback, ancient forests, beautiful marine environments and unique wildlife, Australia certainly offers countless opportunities for adventure seekers and experiences such as sky diving, safaris and camping ranked particularly high with Australians. In the United States it was safaris and trekking which headed the adventure interests, while in the UK sky diving and safari seem to thrill locals the most.
It may be a South Pacific mindset as New Zealand followed in fourth place in the ranking with safaris again proving the most popular adventure option from Internet search histories. It's score of 38 placed the country just ahead of Germany in fifth, with Canada, India, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria making up the rest of the top ten.
But, scanning further down in the ranking it appears that the adventurous spirit does not actually spread throughout the South Pacific, but this does raise questions over the data and the fact that it obviously has a major failing based around online usage. Papua New Guinea was among the countries ranked in the bottom ten in terms of the adventure searches with a final score of just 2 - its highest score was a five for searches for safaris.
The southwestern Pacific nation, a country of immense cultural and biological diversity, finds itself alongside Seychelles and Grenada in the bottom ten, which is dominated by African markets (Lesotho, Malawi, Yemen, and Sudan) and the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and right at the bottom, Tajikistan.