With industry and financial experts betting that post-COVID travelers will focus on secluded outdoor activities, and with health experts finding that COVID-19 spreads far less easily outdoors, outdoor recreation is currently enjoying its time in the limelight, as evidenced by recent crowds at National Parks, on local trails and everywhere in between. For businesses focused on outdoor recreation, the opportunity to enable outdoor experiences for restless customers is substantial.

The cabin fever created by the COVID-19 pandemic has generated a fierce global desire to reunite outside with friends and family. In the US, as states reopen and restrictions lift, the yearning to travel is palpable; according to a study cited in The New York Times, “one-third of Americans said they hope to travel within three months after restrictions are lifted.” But airline and international travel is not on their minds. Instead, experts predict “a boom in road trips,” which provide a “sense of freedom with personal controls [that] will be ideal for people who want security.”

Along with post COVID behavior changing to include traveling closer to home, “more than half of American travelers say they plan to avoid crowded destinations when they resume traveling.”

“Travelers will have a strong desire to get out to and explore the great outdoors, including less-populated destinations,” predicts executive director for the Wyoming Office of Tourism Diana Shober, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal. Further influencing this trend is the discovery that, according to health experts, “people are significantly less likely to get the coronavirus while outside.”

Says financial writer Michael Brush in MarketWatch, “Even if the virus subsides, which is by no means a given, we will be reprogrammed to favor outdoor activities that don’t involve a lot of other people.” Furthermore, money manager Eric Marshall at Hodges Capital Management in Dallas predicts this trend will boost sales at companies in boating, golf, recreational vehicles and camping.

Even before COVID-19 influenced the rush to the outdoors, when taken as a whole, the US outdoor industry accounted for about $412 billion in annual economic activity; that’s over 2 percent of GDP. In terms of consumer spending, it's a bigger market than either Pharmaceuticals or Automobiles.