KOA Annual Camping Report Shows Boomers are Back – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
Kampgrounds of America Inc. (KOA) reports that nearly 88 million households identify as campers and that nearly 54 million households took a camping trip in 2023.
The data is part of KOA’s tenth edition of its North American Camping & Outdoor Hospitality Report. The report, conducted by Cairn Consulting Group, has become a key bellwether for the industry and includes data collected from both KOA parks and non-KOA parks.
KOA notes that over the past decade:
- The number of overall camping households increased by 23%,
- The number of active camping households (those that have camped in the last year) surged 68%,
- New campers represent an average of 9% of guests,
- Tent usage is up 56%, RV usage is 96% and Cabin/Glamping usage is up 101%,
- And there has been a 98% increase in the number of households who camp three or more times annually.
“This is the best part about consistent investment in research is that you can see year-over-year growth and trends,” said Toby O’Rourke, president and CEO of KOA, told Woodall’s Campground Magazine (WCM). “We understand what’s truly a trend or what’s a blip, and we’ve been able to chart that massive growth of our business over these past 10 years. I think it is quite substantial when you step back and look at the numbers. The pandemic fueled a lot of growth, but because we were doing this research clear back to 2014, we know we were having year-over-year growth consistently even heading into the pandemic. So, it has been validating, I guess in some sense to just how popular outdoor hospitality and camping is and having 10 years’ worth of data to stand behind it.”
Perhaps one of the biggest changes in the report since its inception has been the addition of glamping, something that wasn’t even in the report until around 2017.
“It wasn’t even really something we talked about before 2017 and at that time 30% of people hadn’t even heard that word or didn’t have any exposure to it, and now it’s a big part of the growth in the outdoor hospitality space,” O’Rourke explained.
Now 34% of new guests and 36% of people are interested in trying glamping, according to the report.
“I think what is unique when we look at the data is that people engage in all sorts of outdoor hospitality,” O’Rourke said. “They don’t self-identify as only doing one thing. There are RVers who are highly interested in glamping and have also stayed in RVs or traditional tents, and so everything merges. I think that crossover has been positive for the industry.”
Another unique area of growth has been in the diversity of campers. Forty-five percent of new campers are from diverse backgrounds.
“We saw a 16-point increase in overall diversity over these past 10 years,” said O’Rourke. “So, 34% of total campers are people of color.”
New Camper Profile
The report notes that in 2023, most new campers were from families earning less than $100,000 and located in predominantly suburban and rural areas.
“The past year also saw a higher proportion of baby boomers, 59% of whom were retired and on fixed incomes, and a lower-income Gen Z group,” notes the report. “Additionally, a drop in the participation of Millennials, who are currently at peak earning years, significantly influenced the new camper dynamics.”
O’Rourke told WCM she felt that Baby Boomers were camping in higher numbers now that the COVID pandemic is over.
“We saw huge growth in Baby Boomers camping in 2023. Twenty-two percent of the new campers were Baby Boomers,” she explained. “I think as we look back, when we started doing this research 10 years ago, Baby Boomers were a very prevalent part of camping, and then as we went through the pandemic, a lot of those people were staying home probably out of fears, over health risks. Now they’re coming back out and camping.”
Another big shift is that 64% of new campers do not have children in the household.
“That is all tied to that 22% of Baby Boomers or new campers,” O’Rourke noted. “We haven’t seen a number like that in a few years. That has been a big change over these past 10 years or so, just the amount of people that are camping with children, that’s gone up significantly. But just looking at last year and isolating it, we saw a lot more people coming back to camping or starting camping that are of that boomer generation.”
Other key new camper data from the report:
- Nearly 1 in 4 new campers have a household income over $100K,
- Nearly two-thirds of new campers are from suburban or rural areas,
- And 45% of new campers are from diverse backgrounds.
Fifty-four percent of first-time RVers reported that they had a “great” experience, while 32% reported having a “good” experience.
Retaining Campers
The report notes that the top reasons for not camping include a range of concerns:
- 21% of potential campers prefer other accommodations,
- Financial constraints hindered 19%,
- Another 19% cite a lack of safety and security,
- 18% prefer different types of vacations,
- And overcrowded campgrounds deter 17%.
“Encouragingly, “at-risk campers” have seen a year-over-year decline, dropping from 45% to 28%,” notes the report. “However, certain groups are more likely to not participate in camping in 2024. These include 37% of Gen Z individuals, 41% of Black guests, 46% of Asian guests and a notable 48% of households without children.”
“I was excited to see the numbers on at-risk campers go down dramatically this year,” O’Rourke said. “I attribute that a lot to some of the drop off of people that were probably the higher risk campers last year that we’ve identified in the past that maybe aren’t camping anymore. The group we have now that are camping, and those boomers coming back in, are highly satisfied and highly engaged.
“People are saying their first camping trip was a great experience, 47%, that’s up from 30% the prior year,” she added. “I think the more we can continue to as an industry solve points of friction and make it easy for people to camp, we’ll continue to see those numbers continue to go up and that at-risk number continue to go down.”
To read the full report, scroll below or head to https://koa.com/north-american-camping-report/.
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