The Outdoor Industry Association's newest outdoor activity participation rates show a mixed bag when it comes to adventure or Risk Focussed Activities (RFA):
In a previous post I had looked for patterns with risk focused activities (RFA).
Specifically, I was looking at whitewater kayaking, sea kayaking, rafting, climbing and scuba diving. These activities differ from the others in the list above in that confronting risk and risk assessment are both required and continual, beyond the inherent risks themselves (read previous post here).
Both kayaking are still high, with an interesting split between mountaineering (up significantly) and indoor gym climbing (down). For the record, population growth is around 1%, so any of the activities in green above are seeing a net increase in participants (and red vice versa).
From a commercial perspective, gym climbing is easily accessable and offers a simple business model - if gym climbing is indeed declining, gyms will close down, limiting the typical entry point to the sport and ultimately affecting the surprisingly robust growth of ice and mountain climbing. These two groups need to get together, as one needs the other to survive. Ice/mtn reports some wide variation in numbers year to year, but is still only half the size of gym climbing (2.1mill vs. 4.6mill for gym).
Rafting is the big loser here, down 5%, however its participation numbers are still large compared to other niche activities like ww kayaking (3.6mill rafters vs. 1.8mill wwk). The raw data in the OIA report shows rafting with a dramatic dip in the last two years (after several years of modest growth), so some caution should be added for seasonal variations and regional circumstances. In my home region, the rafting sector has certainly been sliding downhill in numbers of participants. This is troublesome: unlike many activities on the OIA data above, rafting is a primarily commercial enterprise (along with ski/snowboard). It (typically) takes an operator to facilitate the activity. When participation goes down, guide jobs are lost, but more importantly regional tourism economies are affected. I think rafting is due for a re-think on its business model and product it is offering. They need to re-position themselves given demographic and market changes taking place across the continent. I could on about this, but won't.
On a separate note, SUP, my favourite activity to dislike, is averaging 21% growth. OIA has only 3 years of data, so did not include it in the material above.
OIA's complete report can be found here.