Playing the Outdoors Market.

Most "Research Update" columns in Parks & Recreation magazine focus on sharing the findings from peer-reviewed journals in recreation and leisure services. This month's offering represents a departure from previous columns by gleaning nature tourism or adventure travel information from several large surveys commissioned by industry-affiliated associations or organizations.

Conducted by private-sector research firms, these surveys are usually descriptive in nature and include relatively less methodological information than most journal publications. Nevertheless, these reports provide important "snapshots" of components of the burgeoning tourism industry. Internet technology makes these heretofore inaccessible reports much more available. Executive summaries and excerpts from each of the surveys are posted on the Web site of sponsoring organizations or associations. In keeping with their sponsorship, however, few of the reports are free.

Tourism is a large and growing industry, but all outdoor recreation is not tourism, and vice versa. This "Research Update" highlights surveys commissioned or sponsored by the Recreation Roundtable/American Recreation Coalition, Outdoor Retailer magazine, the Travel Industry Association of America, and Travel Industries. So skim for topics and trends of interest, and visit the appropriate Web sites for more information.

Tourism Works For America

"Tourism Works for America 1998" is the eighth annual compilation of tourism and travel industry statistics. Produced by the Travel Industry Association of America, "Tourism Works" includes data from more than 80 sources, and serves as an "essential publication about the U.S. tourism industry." As the nation's top service export and one of its largest employers, tourism represents a clean and growing form of economic development suitable for urban and rural areas. "Tourism Works" reported that Americans took 1.26 billion person-trips in 1997, up 8 percent from the year before. Visitor spent $502.4 billion in 1997, supporting 7 million jobs and generating $71.1 billion in taxes.

Pleasure travel accounted for 71 percent of all U.S. residential travel. Primary purposes of pleasure travel included visiting friends and relatives, entertainment, and outdoor recreation (15 percent). Based on the importance of outdoor recreation as a travel motivator, the last section of the report, "Recreation and Sports," includes visitation and economic-impact data for national and state parks as well as national forests and other public lands. Short summaries on snow sports, boating, and adventure travel provide participation and economic-impact figures to illustrate the role and scope of these outdoor recreation activities.

More than 50 million skier/snowboarder visits were reported by the 507 ski resorts operating in the United States in the 1996-97 season. The number of skiers remained fairly constant, but snowboarding exploded, boasting a 150 percent increase in participation over six years and becoming the fastest growing snow sport. The largest component of snow-related expenditures, according to SnowSports Industries America, was travel and entertainment. Individual snowmobile enthusiasts spent about $2,500 on snowmobile-related expenditures and logged about 1,200 miles on their machines during the same period.

Recreational boats represent a big-ticket equipment purchase and are, therefore, important to resellers, marina operators, and boating enthusiasts. Approximately 78 million Americans went boating in 1997, spending almost $20 billion. Fishing, which accounts for nearly half of all recreational boating, remains the favorite activity of boaters.

The adventure travel data reported in "Tourism Works" was derived from a report of the same name produced by the Travel Industry Association of America. Based on the growth and importance of adventure travel, it is summarized in the next section.

TIA Traveler Profiles

In 1997 and '98, the Travel Industry Association of America released a series of traveler profiles derived from TIA's National Travel Survey. Highlights from the Adventure Travel Report will be mentioned in this "Research Update." TIA also produced profiles on historical/cultural travelers, weekend travelers, gamblers, hotel/motel travelers, mature travelers and minority travelers.

The "1997 Adventure Travel Report" provided the most information about outdoor recreation-oriented travel. The report noted that about 50 percent of this country's adult population had taken an adventure vacation sometime in the past five years. Distinguishing between hard (white-water rafting/kayaking, snorkeling/scuba, mountain biking) and soft (camping and hiking) adventure activities, the research found that soft adventure vacations occurred about three times more frequently than hard adventure vacations.

In terms of demographics, the soft adventure travelers were akin to the total U.S. traveling population. The hard adventure travelers, though fewer, were more likely to report an adventure activity as the primary trip motivator. About 25 percent of all adventure travelers conceded that the adventure activity was not a primary motivator to take a vacation, rather it was an activity undertaken while traveling. Local, regional, state, and federal parks; forests; and public lands serve as the "venues" for many adventure tourism excursions. There is growing recognition of this role in public-lands policy decisions.

Outdoor Recreation in America 1998[C]

Since 1993, the Recreation Roundtable, an industry association affiliated with the American Recreation Coalition, has commissioned Roper Starch Worldwide to conduct surveys of the American population's outdoor recreation activities and attitudes. The 1998 survey reported data collected through in-home, in-person interviews of two representative nationwide cross sections totaling almost 4,000 people over the age of 18. Interviews were conducted in March and April 1998.

As with previous surveys, "Outdoor Recreation in America 1998" contains a wealth of outdoor recreation data. Patterns, participation rates, and preferences are well documented in the report. Several sections relate specifically to outdoor recreation and tourism. In the 12 months before the interviews were conducted, for example, 31 percent of respondents had taken an outdoor recreation vacation. More importantly, 55 percent of the "influentials," a small but important subset of respondents tracked by Roper Starch as opinion leaders, took an outdoor recreation vacation. However, several measures of satisfaction -- vacation value, quality of service provided by employees, and activities/instruction available -- were down compared with previous years.

Consistent with most recreation and tourism research, outdoor recreation vacations satisfied vacationers' desire for fun, relaxation, stress relief, experiences with nature, and exercise. Satisfaction measures for two social components of the outdoor recreation vacation, "family togetherness" and "being with friends," also increased. "Fun," "Experiencing nature," and "Being with friends" showed the greatest increases in satisfaction between 1995 and '98. In general, respondents who reported higher levels of income and education were more satisfied with their outdoor recreation vacations.

In 1998, the survey also included special sections on fees and charges and the public's awareness of the availability of outdoor recreation opportunities on public lands managed by federal agencies. Respondents were most familiar with recreation opportunities available at National Park Service sites. Other federal resource agencies that were identified by more than 50 percent of the respondents as recreation providers included the USDI Fish and Wildlife Service and the USDA Forest Service. Men were more likely than women to be aware of recreation opportunities on public lands, as were respondents reporting higher levels of education and income when compared to disadvantaged respondents.

Active recreationists, defined as monthly participants in outdoor recreation, were familiar with opportunities available on public lands. About one-third of the respondents reported visiting a federal site during the past year. Not surprisingly, folks in the Midwest and West reported greater usage of federally managed public lands

The need to increase the amount of money available for recreation management has led to a growth in the fees and charges for recreation. Users of public lands were generally willing to pay additional fees to use federal lands. Active recreationists and Americans reporting high satisfaction with their experiences were willing to pay more to recreate on federally managed lands.

Visitors to different types of federally managed public lands had different profiles. Visitors to Fish and Wildlife and Army Corps of Engineers sites, for example, were more likely to fish and hunt. Forest Service visitors, on the other hand, were more likely to picnic, visit cultural sites, and engage in outdoor photography. Bureau of Land Management recreationists were much more likely to participate in off-road-vehicle use and motorcycling. National Park Service visitors, though more active than the average American, are "the most moderate participants in outdoor recreation activities of all the federal site visitor groups."

The State of Outdoor Retail

Of course all of this outdoor recreation activity requires time, travel, and equipment. Outdoor Retailer magazine's "State of the Market" survey reported 1998 sales of $4.8 billion in the outdoor specialty market, a niche component of the outdoor recreation and sporting goods industry. Backpacking and camping were the only activities marketed by more than 50 percent of the responding outdoor specialty retailers.

Adventure travel, tied in fourth position with rock climbing, was marketed as an outdoor recreation activity by 32 percent of respondents. Travel luggage appeared in the "Top Ten" list of products sold by outdoor specialty retailers, proving that outdoor retailers, not generally considered part of the "travel industry," are dearly and positively impacted by tourism.

Responding outdoor recreation retailers were quintessential small businesses: small (76 percent reported less than $1 million in annual sales), stable (67 percent had been in business longer than 10 years), technologically savvy (almost 40 percent boasted Web sites), independent (68 percent stand-alone) businesses with an active sales force that practices what it preaches. Strong supporters of conservation and education, more than one-third of the "retailers allow employees time off to participate in related programs" and "participate in maintenance or clean up of trails, beaches and rivers."

1996 Sports Participation

Most of the data reported in the National Sporting Goods Association's "1996 Sports Participation" survey will be of interest to active recreation and sports programming professionals. Drawn from the responses of 35,000 households (and oversampled to ensure a return sample representative of sponsors' keen interest in certain "characteristics determined to be key indicators of general purchase behavior"), these data dramatically illustrate the increase of inline skating, skateboarding, and snowboarding among 7- to 17-year-old sports participants. Participation and purchasing behavior .in 57 sports, ranging from aerobic exercise to windsurfing, is available from the NSGA.

Although many of the 57 sports are related to outdoor recreation (camping, fishing, hiking, mountain biking, scuba diving), only one, camping (vacation/ overnight), explicitly includes an overnight stay. Up 4.3 percent (46.6 million participants), camping is the fourth most common activity in the survey. (Walking for exercise, swimming, and exercising with equipment are the top three.)

Perhaps of greater interest to outdoor recreation and tourism planners are the high-volume, high-growth sports the NSGA survey tracked. Outdoor activities to keep a watchful eye on include the aforementioned camping, hiking (28.4 million participants, up 7.2 percent over the prior year), backpacking (12 million participants, up 4.7 percent), and mountain biking (8.1 million participants, up 11.4 percent). Skateboarding (6.3 million participants, up 35.8 percent), with its popularity among the under-17 age group, is also a key indicator.

References

Gabbard, A. 1998. The 1998 State of The Market: A Retail Perspective Of The Outdoor Industry. Outdoor Retailer. www. outdoorbiz.com

National Sporting Goods Association. 1996. Sports Participation in 1996. www.nsga.org/research/research.html

Recreation Roundtable. 1998. Outdoor Recreation in America 1998(D. Roper Starch Worldwide. www.funoutdoors.com

Minic, D. (Ed). 1998. Tourism Works For America 1998. Travel Industry Association of America. Washington, D.C. www.tia.org

RELATED ARTICLE: Research Into Action: Trends in the Out of Doors

Research Into Action is published monthly by the Society of Park and Recreation Educators, National Recreation and Park Association. As an accompaniment to "Research Update," its goal is to turn research findings into field action by highlighting management strategies. Founding editors are Dr. Ruth Russell and Dr. Daniel D. McLean, Department of Recreation and Park Administration, Indiana University.

Introduction

The availability of national data sets has not often been reported in literature. The use of these data sets can provide researchers and resource managers with valuable information. An advantage of the data sets is the relative ease of their full or partial retrieval from the World Wide Web.

Impact of this Research

Resource managers frequently have insufficient research available to them. Likewise, researchers may focus on narrow topics, oftentimes driven by the availability of funding. Linking to larger national data sets allows resource managers and researchers to better understand the data they have. These "snapshots" of the tourism industry provide insight into trends and issues that resource managers may need to address and upon which researchers may expand.

How to Use this Research

* The presence of multiple resource data sets regarding tourism -- especially natural, resource-based tourism -- expands the researcher and resource manager's understanding

* Resource managers, trip planners, and adventure programmers can use this data to assess trends in use and participation

* Understanding why people travel, who travels, and why they may engage in adventure recreation activities improves the ability to offer such programs

* The resource manager can develop an impressive environmental scanning process and enhance awareness of the industry.

For More Information

Recreation Roundtable. June 1998. Outdoor Recreation in America 1998[C] - Roper Starch Worldwide [www.funout doors.com]

Minic, D. (IU Executive Development Program.) 1998. Tourism Works for America 1998. Travel Industry Association of America. Washington, D.C. [www.tia.org]

Emilyn Sheffield is a professor of recreation and parks management at California State University at Chico. Michelle Dawson is the partnership and marketing coordinator for the National Recreation Group, Bureau of Land Management.

Research Update is edited by Dr. Irma O'Dell of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and Kim L. Siegenthaler of Appalachian State University.