Marriott Bonvoy is rethinking how travelers connect with nature.
The world’s largest hotel company just announced a new digital platform designed to make it easier for travelers to discover and book outdoor accommodations—including cabins, glamping-style lodging, and nature-driven hotels—for their next adventure. Called the Marriott Bonvoy Outdoors, the stays are grouped by the types of activities travelers seek, whether that’s hiking near alpine lakes, snorkeling among coral reefs teeming with fish, or getting cozy in a cabin in the woods. It’s a shift that acknowledges a growing trend: Many travelers are planning trips around the experiences they want to have outdoors, not just the places they want to check off a list.
“The outdoors has never been more central to how people want to travel,” Peggy Roe, executive vice president and chief customer officer of Marriott International, told Afar. “For many outdoor lovers, finding the perfect place to ski, hike, bike, or chase their favorite activity isn’t always easy. It takes time, research, and a lot of planning, so we have seen that many people end up going to the same places again and again. Marriott Bonvoy Outdoors was created to take some of the guesswork out of that process.”
Love hiking? You can use the new Marriott Bonvoy Outdoors platform to search for properties, such as the Ion Adventure Hotel in Iceland, via your outdoor passions.
Photo by Ragnar Th. Sigurdsson/Courtesy of Marriott
On the dedicated platform, travelers can now search the brand’s collection of more than 450 hotels (plus upwards of 50,000 Homes & Villas vacation rentals) that offer immediate access to popular outdoor activities, broken down by these categories: ski and snowboard, hike and glamp, bike, scuba and snorkel, surf, fish, and paddle.
Roe explained that “with a global portfolio of more than 9,500 hotels, we had to be rigorous in defining what truly makes a property ‘outdoor-focused.’ It’s not enough to simply be near nature; we look at location, design, and programming together.”
The platform also allows outdoorsy travelers to search by their interests first, potentially allowing them to find a destination unfamiliar to them.
“Someone who loves to ski but always goes to the same location in Colorado or Vermont can now discover our offerings in Europe more easily and book their next trip there,” Roe says. Searching for kayaking in Latin America, for example, yields results for hotels like The St. Regis Kanai Resort in Mexico’s Riviera Maya and The Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands, and a search for hiking in Canada leads to stays such as Autograph Collection’s Kananaskis Mountain Lodge in the Canadian Rockies and The Josie Hotel near the Red Mountain ski resort in British Columbia.
Marriott Bonvoy Outdoors encompasses offerings from Marriott’s entire portfolio, ranging from boutique brands like Autograph Collection to high-end ones like St. Regis Hotels & Resorts.
Postcard Cabins properties, such as this Piney Woods outpost outside of Dallas, Texas, are part of the new Outdoor Collection by Marriott Bonvoy.
Courtesy of Marriott
Outdoor Collection by Marriott Bonvoy
In addition to the new digital platform, Marriott unveiled its newest brand, the Outdoor Collection by Marriott Bonvoy.
The new Outdoor Collection by Marriott Bonvoy is a “curated portfolio [offering] outdoor-focused, design-forward stays in remarkable landscapes, from cabins tucked into woodlands near National Parks to boutique hotels on cliffs’ edges,” according to a release announcing the new collection. The idea is a collection of properties that “combine unparalleled access to nature alongside the essential needs that hotel guests expect, such as comfortable beds, hot running water, and dedicated restrooms.”
The two founding members include Postcard Cabins (formerly Getaway Outposts), which operates more than 1,200 compact cabins across 29 U.S. outposts, and Trailborn, a boutique brand with properties near national parks and wild landscapes, including the Rockies, the Grand Canyon, and North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Marriott purchased the former in 2024 and entered into a long-term partnership with the latter around the same time. Marriott said the brand plans to expand the Outdoor Collection by Marriott Bonvoy to include properties that feature cabins, yurts, domes, eco-lodges, and more.
As part of the launch, Marriott Bonvoy is running a real-world treasure hunt, dubbed the Drop Pin Challenge. Over the course of the campaign, which runs through October 31, Marriott, in partnership with actor and outdoor enthusiast Dylan Efron, has hidden 20 physical “pins” across iconic outdoor destinations in the U.S. and Canada, such as the Great Smoky Mountains and Banff. Contestants are given coordinates and a clue (such as “track down the big bronze bear and see what’s hiding in the pines nearby” in Yellowstone) that is meant to lead them to a physical “pin” embedded with a QR code. The first 50 participants to scan it at each site will earn 10,000 Marriott Bonvoy points.
