It’s been a couple of months since KOA released its latest annual report on North American camping, and as usual, subsequent industry coverage was faithfully upbeat. Most stories homed in on the economic numbers, proof that camping has become a force with which to be reckoned : 58 million households camped in 2022, spending $52 billion, an $8 billion increase over 2021. Campers spent on average $332 per day, up $19 per day compared to the previous year. Nor are these campers a bunch of vagabonds: 28% have annual household income of more than $100,000, compared with a nationwide rate of 21%.
But take a closer look at the 60-page report and a few dissonant notes can be discerned—starting with the title, North American Camping and Outdoor Hospitality Report 2023, which for the first time includes that bit about “outdoor hospitality” under its umbrella. As explained in the introduction, KOA decided it was time to look “more holistically at outdoor hospitality” because—well, because why isn’t exactly clear. As the introduction further explains, in a mystifyingly abstract and circular manner, “As more leisure travelers choose the outdoors over other alternatives, it is critical to view this growing space inclusively.”
Suffice to say that the 2023 camping report wanted to look at glamping—perhaps because KOA is itself getting into the glamping business, perhaps because it wants to acquire more ammunition in its quest to have KOA campgrounds pick up their pace of gentrification—even if that required some contortions. There is, for example, its statement that “glamping, formerly viewed as a subset of the camping industry, attracts guests who had not previously considered camping.” Translation: glamping has become so popular (10 million households in 2022) that we’ll drop that “subset” business and put those glampers in the same camping basket as everyone else. The result, alas, is a relatively unfocused report on shifting categories of campers, glampers, RVers and even leisure travelers, at times broken out separately and at other times combined into one undifferentiated statistical mass, under the “outdoor hospitality” rubric, and let the reader puzzle it out.
Having thus muddied the waters, the KOA report doesn’t go out of its way to explain precisely what qualifies as “glamping.” A glossary at the end of the document describes it as “staying in unique accommodations with enhanced services and amenities,” which is as slippery as nailing Jell-O to a wall: unique? enhanced? Meanwhile, the only glamping example in the report’s text is a reference to “renting a canvas tent at a glamping resort,” which despite its circular reasoning, could describe any number of regular campgrounds with a few teepees or yurts available. Is that glamping?
That lack of precision may explain the report’s most mystifying set of numbers, average daily expenditures—for accommodations, food and beverages— of $155 for “campers” vs. $184 for glampers. The first total seems excessively high, given that more than half of all campers are sleeping in family tents (or in backpacker tents in the backcountry), but the glamper total seems even more out of whack, considering that relatively few glampsites can be had for as little as $184 a night (and forget about food and beverages) and nightly rates of $400 and $500 are not unusual. Who are these glampers, and what is their secret?
But campers or glampers—what’s the difference, and who cares? Actually, campground owners should care, because glampers are by definition not camping in their own RVs or tents, a traditional campground’s bread and butter. Glampers are in search of “unique accommodations,” which means not only that the pressure is on for commercial campgrounds to make significant capital investments “to meet guest expectations,” as KOA would have us believe; but also to keep changing the lodging mix to maintain that “unique” draw. Heaven help those who fail. As another unheralded report finding notes, the biggest reason why campers are least likely to repeat the experience is because they’re “bored while camping.” How precious is that?
It’s ironic, then, that even as KOA has taken a more “holistic” approach to “outdoor hospitality,” all signs are that the entire enterprise has reached some kind of plateau. Camping overall made up 32% of the report’s undefined “leisure travel market” in 2022, a 20% drop in share from 2021. The surge in glamping interest, which saw 4.8 million new glampers in 2020 and 4.9 million in 2021, took a big step back in 2022, to 2.1 million—still a hefty number, to be sure, but suggestive of a certain faddishness that may be peaking. And while a record high 15.2 million households self-identified as RVers in 2022, that represented just a 2.6% increase over 2021, compared with double-digit increases the previous two years, also suggesting a marked slowdown.
But here’s the most sobering—if largely unremarked—finding in KOA’s report: even as the growth in camping households of all stripes is leveling off, more and more of those campers are going elsewhere. Last year, only 18% of all camping nights were spent in private campgrounds, down from 22% in 2021 and continuing a steady decline from the 25% posted in 2018. National and state parks have seen a similar drop-off, from 40% of all camping nights in 2018 to 35% in 2021 to 31% last year.
Where did everybody go? A big chunk of them went boondocking, at 16% of the total in 2022, more than double the 7% in 2021. Looks like glamping is not the be-all and end-all, after all.
P.S. One additional finding in the KOA report merits attention: 40% of all campers report they have difficulty walking or climbing stairs. ‘Nuff said.
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