During the pandemic, when Miriam Leitko couldn’t swim because pools were closed, the lifelong swimmer built a lap pool at her home in Willis, Texas. As soon as travel restrictions were lifted in 2021, she signed up for a weeklong trip to Hawaii with SwimVacation, a Maine-based tour operator that specializes in open-water swimming.
“Open-water swimming becomes energizing,” said Ms. Leitko, 64, who has taken 12 trips with the company. The tours, she said, allow her to leave her stress “literally in the ocean.”
Summer vacations are often built around the pleasures of cannonballing into a lake or splashing in the ocean. In contrast, these tours build trips around organized swims that might involve diving among sea lions in the Galápagos, swimming island to island in the Adriatic or gliding over coral reefs in the Caribbean.
“You never feel smaller than when you’re in the ocean, which has a transformative effect,” said Hopper McDonough, the founder and a partner in SwimVacation, which bases most of its trips on yachts in places like Turkey, where the next available departure is September 2024 ($6,995 for one week).
“After the pandemic, we sold out two years in advance,” he said.
The swimming wave
Whether participants are seeking transformation, pursuing a Covid-stymied passion or revenge traveling, swim tour operators say they are experiencing a tidal wave of growth.
The England-based company SwimTrek, established in 2003, pegs the explosion to the pandemic-driven outdoor movement.
Nearly a third of SwimTrek’s clients — and growing — are from the United States, where the company has added vacations in Hawaii and Oregon (five days in Oregon’s Cascade Lakes costs $2,600) as well as trips to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.
“When you swim in open water, every experience is different, whether that’s the state of the sea, the tides or the wildlife,” said Simon Murie, the founder of SwimTrek. “That’s the beauty, the unpredictability.”
Strel Swimming Adventures, founded by Martin Strel, a marathon swimmer who holds the Guinness World Record for distance swimming at 5,268 kilometers, and his son, Borut, met the surge with new Mexican destinations, including the Sea of Cortez (seven-day trips in October and November from $1,990). The company also offers tours in Greece, Slovenia and Turkey.
Active England, an English adventure operator, has seen “exponential” growth in its swim tours since travel resumed, according to Will Cairns,…
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