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AstroTours Named a Finalist for the 2026 Arival Tour Innovator Award
Updated: 7 hours ago
We have some news that still feels a little surreal to write.
AstroTours.org has been named a finalist for Arival’s 2026 Tour Innovator Award, one of the most prestigious awards in the tours and experiences industry!
We are one of just four finalists from around the world, and the only North American finalist in the category.
The other finalists are 46° Balaton Borbusz of Hungary, Overland Ireland Tours of Ireland, and The Little Green Boat of Curaçao. The winner will be announced October 14 at Arival 360 in Spokane, Washington.
For our team, this is an extraordinary honor.
And seeing Tour Innovator next to the AstroTours name gets directly at an idea we have been building around since 2018:
Bring the observatory to where people already are.
Turning a destination into an observatory
Astronomy has traditionally revolved around a place.
People travel to observatories, planetariums, science centers, universities, and other fixed facilities. The instruments stay there and visitors come to them.
AstroTours reverses that relationship.
Our astronomers bring telescopes, lasers, observing equipment, science, and storytelling directly into the places people are already exploring.
A ranch outside Boulder can become an observatory for the night. So can a mountain resort in Breckenridge, a private home, a wedding venue, a school, a conference, a festival, or a clearing high in the Rockies.
The destination becomes the observatory.
What began with Colorado stargazing tours in 2018 has expanded into private astronomy experiences, resort programs, weddings, corporate events, schools, festivals, community events, and destination-wide astronomy programming.
An AstroTour can mean two guests gathered around a telescope or hundreds of people moving through an astronomy experience.
The basic idea remains the same:
Go outside. Meet people where they are. Look up.
That approach fits well with the way Arival defines its Tour Innovator Award: recognizing operators that have changed how people experience a destination through a format, itinerary, or approach others are not doing in quite the same way.
For us, reaching the finalist stage is meaningful recognition of an approach we have spent eight years developing under real skies.
The universe sets the itinerary
Every AstroTour begins with an itinerary written by the universe.
Before an astronomer arrives, we know the Moon phase, which planets will be visible, when they rise and set, which constellations are in season, where the Milky Way will appear, and whether a meteor shower or other celestial event deserves a place in the evening.
We plan carefully around all of it.
Then the universe starts improvising.
A bright shooting star can stop the entire group halfway through a sentence. An unexpected clearing can reveal something clouds had hidden earlier. A guest question can send the group down an entirely new path of exploration.
A view of Saturn can lead into orbital mechanics and the strange structure of its rings. At a wedding, the metals in the rings can become a story about how the elements were forged in stars. A look at the Moon can open conversations about tides, calendars, eclipses, geology, navigation, or spaceflight.
Our astronomers follow those connections wherever the night leads.
The universe sets the itinerary, and it usually has a few surprises waiting for us.
More than looking through a telescope
AstroTours sits at the intersection of tourism, outdoor recreation, science education, storytelling, and live interpretation.
We want guests to see Saturn through a telescope and understand what they are seeing.
We want someone to find the Andromeda Galaxy and comprehend that the light reaching their eyes began its journey roughly 2.5 million years ago.
And we want people to leave with something they can carry with them: a constellation they can find again, a way to recognize a planet, a story attached to the stars, or simply a stronger habit of looking upward.
That is why a good astronomer and storyteller matters far more to the experience than the telescope.
Our team brings backgrounds in astronomy, astrophysics, physics, education, and science communication into the field. Every program can follow the curiosity of the group while connecting what is overhead with the destination around them.
Travel also changes our relationship with the sky.
A visitor from Australia has grown up beneath a dramatically different celestial landscape than someone from Colorado. Latitude reveals different constellations. Seasons expose different parts of the sky. Mountains, deserts, forests, oceans, and cities frame the heavens differently.
Yet wherever we travel, we are looking into the same universe.
A destination can show us a new sky while deepening our connection to the sky we already call home.
That is one of the ideas at the heart of astrotourism.
Eight years of mobile astronomy
AstroTours began in Colorado in 2018 with the idea of bringing astronomy directly to the places people were already exploring.
The idea has traveled much farther since.
Our astronomers have delivered astronomy programs across Colorado and beyond, including Arizona, California, Arkansas, Texas, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Canada, Mexico, and Australia.
The same mobile astronomy model can serve mountain resorts, private homes, schools, conferences, festivals, tourism destinations, and major public events.
It has expanded beyond nighttime stargazing as well. Solar observing brings astronomy into the daytime. Spectroscopy lets guests break light apart and investigate what stars are made of. Hands-on science programs can connect what people learn during the day directly with the sky overhead that night.
Mobility also makes astronomy easier to bring to different locations, ages, group sizes, and communities.
The developing AstroTours Foundation extends that goal by helping bring astronomy experiences to schools, students, families, and communities where cost might otherwise limit access.
The more places we work, the more ways we find to make astronomy part of the experience of a destination.
Honored to be among global tour innovators
Arival focuses specifically on tours, activities, attractions, and in-destination experiences, which makes the companies we share this finalist list with especially meaningful to us.
We are honored to be among such a strong group of finalists:
46° Balaton Borbusz, Hungary, connects visitors with wineries and communities around Lake Balaton through a hop-on, hop-off wine bus, making a geographically dispersed destination easier to explore.
Overland Ireland Tours, Ireland, builds small-group adventures around local experiences, active travel, and access to places larger tour vehicles cannot easily reach.
The Little Green Boat, Curaçao, combines diving and boat experiences with marine conservation and citizen science, inviting travelers to participate in understanding and protecting the environment they came to experience.
These are thoughtful, creative tourism experiences, and we are proud to have AstroTours considered alongside them.
The winner of the 2026 Arival Tour Innovator Award will be announced October 14 at Arival 360 in Spokane, Washington.
Whatever the result, being selected as one of four finalists is already meaningful recognition for our team.
The next horizon for astrotourism
There are thousands of destinations around the world with extraordinary skies and no permanent observatory.
They do not need one.
A destination does not need a dome on a mountaintop to make the night sky part of the visitor experience. A resort, town, tourism office, park, ranch, hotel, conference, or festival can bring in the astronomers, telescopes, and programming needed to turn the sky overhead into something visitors remember long after they go home.
AstroTours is actively looking for new destinations where we can do exactly that.
If you represent a destination or organization and have looked at your night sky and wondered what kind of experience could be built around it, we would like to hear from you.
Being selected as a finalist for the 2026 Arival Tour Innovator Award is an extraordinary recognition for our team, and we are grateful to Arival and its judges for seeing something meaningful in what we have been building.
Most of all, we are grateful to our astronomers who have hauled telescopes across Colorado and far beyond, stayed late answering one more question, adapted when the sky changed the plan, and shared their knowledge and enthusiasm with thousands of people over the years.
And we are grateful to every guest who has stood outside with us and looked up.
AstroTours began in 2018 with a simple idea:
Bring astronomy to where people already are.
Eight years later, we are still discovering how far that idea can travel.
Wherever it takes us, there will be a sky above us.
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