When the Adventure Travel Trade Association tells people that AdventureELEVATE North America 2027 is heading to Bentonville, Arkansas, a common first reaction is, "Wait. Where?" That reaction is exactly why we are going. AENA 2027 will take place in Bentonville from 20 to 22 April 2027, in a destination the wider trade has not yet discovered, and getting there first is the whole point. Early access pricing runs through 17 September.
A Town That Reinvented Itself
For a long time, Bentonville was known for one thing: it is where Walmart is headquartered. That is the story most of the trade knows. Over the last decade, though, the town has quietly rebuilt itself into one of the most complete outdoor adventure destinations in North America, and few people outside the mountain biking world have caught on.
Bentonville is a working case study in the kind of destination transformation our industry gets excited about, a place that reinvented its entire identity around outdoor recreation, arts, and food almost from scratch.
That makes for a genuinely good story to bring home to clients and audiences. It is not another undiscovered paradise, but a real, documented turnaround with the infrastructure and the press attention to back it up. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and National Geographic have all covered Bentonville's rise in recent years, and the town has arrived early enough that most of the trade has not yet caught on.
What Bentonville Offers
The riding is the anchor. The Oz Trails system holds more than 550 miles of singletrack, radiating out from 80+ miles of trail inside the Bentonville city limits, enough that Outside has covered it repeatedly as a top mountain biking destination in its own right rather than a regional curiosity.
Beyond the trails, Bentonville has emerged as a national art and culture destination. Since opening in 2011, Crystal Bridges, the museum designed by Safdie Architects, has welcomed more than 15 million visitors and helped transform Northwest Arkansas into what National Geographic recently called an unlikely art lover’s paradise and Vanity Fair called America’s Art Museum. With an expansive permanent collection of thousands of works, temporary exhibitions, and art installations across its campus, the museum also recently opened a 114,000 square foot expansion. Its impact can be seen across the region, including a growing food scene, with several James Beard-nominated chefs now working in a town that had none just a decade ago.
Together, those pieces add up to a destination that surprises visitors in the best way. You expect a small town in Arkansas, and you leave with a story you cannot wait to tell.
Why It Fits AdventureELEVATE
AdventureELEVATE is a three-day education and networking conference that brings thought-leaders and practitioners from the adventure travel community together for inspiration and regionally focused insights into the trends shaping the industry. It gathers roughly 250 professionals, among them tour operators, destination representatives, travel writers, and photographers, for a program built around high-value keynotes and concurrent sessions on technology, marketing, and operations, alongside dedicated networking through Marketplace, and the D.N.A. session.
Woven through it all is a firsthand experience of the host destination and its adventure offerings, which is where Bentonville comes in. A town mid-transformation, with the trails, the culture, and the story to match, is exactly the kind of place the event is designed to reveal, and it gives attendees a Day of Adventure and a destination they will want to talk about long after they leave.
Register for AdventureELEVATE 2027
AdventureELEVATE North America 2027 takes place in Bentonville, Arkansas, from 20 to 22 April. For full details and to register, visit the AENA 2027 event page on the ATTA website. Join us in Bentonville to see the destination first, before the rest of the trade catches on.