Tuesday Tactics: Camping Visitor Sentiment
As the public health sector responds to the COVID-19 crisis, public park agencies are called to respond. The purpose of the Tuesday Blog is simple: to provide you with strategies that assist you, your agency and your partners with a mutually beneficial way forward.
Picture: @haltakov
Tuesday Tactics: Camping Visitor Sentiment
Gaining an understanding what visitors are thinking and planning to do is a great way to plan for recreation reopening and on-going management. Our past blog posts (April 22nd) have highlighted using Google searches as an indicator of visitor interests. Outside of that resource, the best way to understand sentiment is to have high quality consumer research (i.e., Cairn Consulting Group) on the issue!
What the Data Says: Each May, Kampgrounds of America (KOA) issues the North American Camping Report which profiles an array of information regarding camping trends. This year, KOA has released a Special Report on the effects of COVID - 19 on camping.
The report shows that camping will likely gain strength in the latter part of the season. The rebound can largely be attributed to camping providing a safe, accessible way to return to the outdoors while still maintaining acceptable social distancing standards. Several key findings from the report include:
Forty-one (41%) percent of campers intend on taking their planned 2020 summer trip;
One third (33%) of non-campers now say they are interested in camping;
Camping is poised to replace other types of trips in 2020;
Camping ranks as the perceived “safest” form of travel, interestingly, ahead of off-the-grid cabins.
The ongoing interest in campgrounds as an overnight lodging source continues in Google Searches.
What this means for public agencies: Sharing high quality research on visitor sentiment with your decision makers can help them understand the priority of your recreation assets as part of the economic recovery. Also, this data can assist you in determining whether you need to develop strategies to alter your recreation profile (e.g. open more sites for RV, etc.).
Blogger Note: We had promised to undertake a Blog on Revenue Forecasting today, but the information from the KOA report was just too exciting not to share! Look for it next week.
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