New Scientist Discovery Tours runs 100 tours with a team of four, works with six operator partners worldwide, and has guests putting deposits down on a solar eclipse in Australia in 2028. The entire operation is built around one idea: go to the same places as everyone else, but tell a story nobody else is telling.
Kevin Currie, Director of New Scientist Discovery Tours, joined the company in 2019 to build what three journalists had started off the side of their desks. The pitch was simple: curate an itinerary around a science story, not a destination, and put an expert on the tour who can actually tell it. Kevin spent months in due diligence before signing on, looking at guest feedback, partner relationships, and industry data. Experiential travel was growing at 19% annually, roughly double the rate of standard travel. He built a business case, launched 20 tours, sold most of them out, and then lost everything to the pandemic. New Scientist kept him. He’s been building since 2022 with a team of four.
The episode covers how New Scientist structures tour development from the inside of a media company, what Kevin looks for when he chooses scientists to accompany tours, and how the team manages a supply chain of partner operators, DMCs, and tour leaders without becoming a tour operator themselves. Kevin explains why they work with only six partners and why the pre-departure briefing between the expert and the tour leader is one of the most important things they do. He describes the 4.6-kilometer walk in the Brecon Beacons where every hundred meters represents 100 million years of Earth’s history, and the moment a guest looks up and realizes the last 20 centimeters represent all of human existence. The episode is also a case study in how a niche operator competes not by being cheaper, but by doing the thing competitors literally cannot copy: getting the science right.
Key Takeaways
- Start with the story, not the destination. 00:26:51 New Scientist Discovery Tours builds every itinerary around a science narrative first, then identifies the stops that best tell that story. Going to the same destinations as every other operator is fine; what separates the tour is the throughline that makes each stop mean something. Iceland is a widely visited destination; Iceland as a guided tour through the geology of a country that is still actively being formed is a different experience entirely.
- Experiential travel was growing at 19% annually before COVID, roughly double the rate of standard travel. 00:07:08 Kevin used that data point, combined with strong guest feedback and enthusiasm from partner operators, to build the business case that brought him into New Scientist in 2019. The industry data validated the direction. The guest research validated the execution. The partner enthusiasm validated the scale.
- Sell 18 months out and put things on sale before guests have used up their year. 00:36:36 When exhibiting at trade shows early in the calendar year, New Scientist consistently hears “I’ve already booked everything for this year.” The response is to have the following year’s tours available to book on the spot. Their guests are early planners who want multiple experiences lined up simultaneously, not sequential impulse buyers.
- Separate the expert’s role from the tour leader’s role. 00:33:20 The tour leader handles logistics, local context, and guest flow. The expert focuses entirely on sharing knowledge. Kevin is deliberate about not blurring those two things, because each role done well requires different skills, and one can undermine the other when they’re combined. The expert arrives on day one and is present from the welcome dinner through the final day.
- Vet scientists for communication skills first, subject expertise second. 00:30:24 Having the right knowledge is not enough. Kevin looks for evidence of public speaking on YouTube, prior tour or cruise experience, and the ability to “hang out with guests,” not just lecture them. New Scientist has a built-in advantage: running conferences and talks means they already have a pool of scientists who have been trained to communicate to a general audience and know how they perform in front of one.
- The guests are part of what you’re selling. 00:24:49 On the first tours Kevin accompanied, he noticed groups carrying on science conversations through dinner without any prompting. On a polar expedition with Richard Dawkins, guests in the audience included a Nobel Prize winner, a submariner who had passed under the North Pole, and a pair of authors. The quality of the guest cohort is part of what makes the experience; it cannot be replicated by copying an itinerary.
- Work with six partners, not more. 00:39:10 Managing a supply chain of operators and DMCs takes significant effort, and the value of a relationship compounds over time. Kevin limits New Scientist to six operator partners and is not looking to expand that number. Repeat tour leaders who have done the route before already understand the product. The pre-departure briefing between the expert and the tour leader exists precisely to short-circuit the communication gaps that cause things to go wrong.
- Video is the most efficient shorthand for an experience that words cannot fully describe. 00:23:27 A photo can communicate a destination. A video can communicate what an experience actually feels like. New Scientist is moving into video for itinerary pages and social, knowing from prior experience that it increases on-page engagement and adds credibility. They’re early in the process, but Kevin is clear on what it’s for: showing the experts in action, not just the scenery.
- Being embedded inside the media brand is a structural advantage, not a licensing arrangement. 01:01:14 Kevin sits next to the editorial team. He is not a consultant placed by the media company to run tours on their behalf. That proximity means the editorial standards that govern New Scientist’s journalism apply directly to how tours are built and described. Competitors copying their eclipse tours have published AI-generated images showing a solar eclipse at physically impossible angles over Cairo. New Scientist catches that kind of error because the people building the tours are surrounded by scientists every day.
- Serving your core readership first creates a better catalog than chasing the highest-yielding segments. 00:51:18 If New Scientist only followed revenue signals, they would only sell polar cruising. Instead, Kevin keeps the reader persona at the center of product development, which is why the catalog includes weekend UK tours under £1,000 alongside Antarctic expeditions. Broad price accessibility is also what keeps astronomy and eclipse guests, who cross-book across themes once they trust the operator.
- Guest repeat bookings don’t cluster by theme. 00:52:27 Guests who booked the Arctic expedition with Richard Dawkins subsequently booked everything from weekend Wales walks to major international expeditions. There is no single thread that explains repeat behavior except trust in the operator. That means the most durable driver of repeat business is not a particular topic niche but the consistency of execution across every tour in the catalog.
- A pre-departure briefing between the expert and the tour leader prevents the most common failure modes. 00:39:34 Two to three weeks before each departure, Kevin runs a meeting with the expert, the tour leader (usually supplied by the DMC), and his team. The meeting walks through the itinerary, identifies what could go wrong, confirms each person’s role, and ensures the tour leader understands what New Scientist is trying to accomplish for its guests, not just the logistics of moving them from place to place. For repeat tours with the same team, that clarity becomes instinctual.
- The 4.6-kilometer walk is a lesson in how to end a tour. 01:09:08 On the Science of Deep Time tour in the Brecon Beacons, every hundred meters of a 4.6-kilometer walk represents 100 million years of Earth’s history. Guests pause at each marker and hear what happened in those 100 million years. The tour ends at the 4.6-kilometer mark, where a guide points out that the last 20 centimeters represent all of human existence. Kevin cites this as the best example of the design principle behind everything New Scientist builds: find an activity that doesn’t just inform guests but gives them a physical experience of the idea, and put it at the end.
- Don’t chase celebrity scientists at the expense of immersion. 00:45:37 Kevin’s standard for experts is credibility and communication, not name recognition. The risk of booking a famous scientist who cannot deliver sustained, informal engagement with guests is losing that guest forever. Richard Dawkins earned his place on the Arctic expedition not because of fame but because he immediately asked to eat every meal with guests and spent the voyage taking notes from the marine biologist on board, which the guests could see.
- The operator who understands the science is harder to copy than the one who just runs good logistics. 00:59:18 Kevin’s competitive defense rests on three things: continuous innovation, long-term relationships with partners and tour leaders, and the credibility standards baked in by working inside a science media organization. Any competitor can replicate a tour route. Fewer can accurately describe what will happen at the angle of a solar eclipse above a specific city on a specific date. That layer of factual precision is what the New Scientist brand has built over 70 years, and it transfers to the tours.