The casual outdoor participant: marketing to the fastest-growing segment

If your marketing leads with “epic adventure” and “adrenaline rush,” you’re talking past the largest growing segment in outdoor recreation. According to the Outdoor Industry Association’s 2025 Participation Trends Report, 181 million Americans now participate in outdoor activities, a record high. But most of that growth isn’t coming from hardcore enthusiasts. It’s coming from casual participants who want something closer to peaceful than extreme, and who’ll book from an outfitter that speaks their language.

The casual outdoor participant is someone who goes on maybe one or two guided trips per year, doesn’t own technical gear, and isn’t trying to check a summit off a bucket list. They want to have a nice time outside. That’s actually the entire pitch. And yet most outfitter websites still lead with words like “challenge yourself” or “experience the ultimate thrill.” That messaging is optimized for the 5% of the market that self-identifies as core outdoorists, not the 42% who describe their approach as casual.

This is a segment you can reach, and one that tends to book through search and social rather than word-of-mouth. Here’s how to do it.

Who the casual participant actually is

The OIA segments the market into three groups: core consumers (~5%), active participants (~50%), and casual participants (~42%). The core group seeks excitement and technical challenge. The casual group wants calm, connection, and happiness. That last word comes straight from the OIA data: when asked the primary benefit they get from outdoor recreation, casual participants ranked “happiness” number one. Not fitness. Not skill-building. Happiness.

The frequency data underlines this. In 2024, the average American recreated outdoors about 65.2 days a year, the second lowest figure since OIA started tracking in 2012. Compared to 2019, the average participant took five fewer outdoor trips per year. People aren’t dropping out of outdoor recreation. They’re doing it less often, more loosely, on their own terms. That profile describes a casual participant, not a lapsed enthusiast.

The demographics are broadening fast. In 2024, Black participation grew 12.8% year-over-year, Hispanic participation grew 11.8%, and both youth (ages 18-24) and seniors (65+) hit multi-year participation highs. Sixty-six percent of households with children now participate in outdoor recreation, the highest rate on record. These aren’t people who grew up in outdoor culture. They’re new to it, coming from communities that have been historically underserved by the industry, and they’re particularly responsive to welcoming, accessible messaging.

The average casual participant spends about $1,400 a year on outdoor goods. That’s less than the $1,600 active participants spend, but the casual segment is so large that its total spending dwarfs what core consumers spend in aggregate. Casual and active participants together account for over 90% of outdoor market spending. The core enthusiast, despite getting most of the industry’s marketing attention, is a rounding error in the revenue column.

The messaging mismatch most operators don’t see

Here’s the problem: the outdoor industry spent decades building a marketing culture around performance, gear obsession, and athletic achievement. That culture attracted core consumers and built strong brands for them. It also accidentally trained most outfitters to talk in a way that alienates casual participants.

“Challenge yourself” signals to a first-timer that this might be hard. That they might fail.

“No experience necessary” signals the opposite: you belong here.

This isn’t a soft distinction. Watauga Group’s research on outdoor participant segments found that 72% of specialty outdoor consumers describe their approach as casual, prioritizing calm over excitement. If your homepage shows images of people in aggressive athletic poses with dramatic lighting and a tagline about conquering the river, you’ve visually filtered out the people most likely to book.

We’ve seen outfitters double casual booking inquiries by making one change: moving “no experience required” from the FAQ section to the first line of the trip description. That’s it. The trips didn’t change. The pricing didn’t change. The copy position changed.

What casual participants search for

Casual participants don’t search the way core outdoorists do. A hardcore kayaker searches “class III whitewater Gauley River.” A casual participant searches “fun kayaking near Fayetteville” or “easy float trip for beginners.” The modifier tells you everything: easy, beginner, family, relaxing, scenic, gentle.

If you’re only optimizing trip pages for activity + location keywords, you’re likely missing the casual search intent entirely. A local keyword playbook helps here, but the casual angle requires adding modifier-rich variants your trip pages may not have.

Good additions to any trip page targeting casual participants:

• “No experience needed”
• “Perfect for first-timers”
• “All gear included”
• “Family-friendly” (where true)
• “Gentle [activity] for beginners”
• “Relaxing [activity] trip”

These aren’t just SEO plays. They’re conversion signals. When a first-timer sees that your page was written for them, the decision to book gets a lot easier.

How to write trip descriptions for casual participants

Most trip description copy is written from the operator’s perspective: what the guide does, what the route covers, how technical the experience is. Casual participants need the opposite. They want to know what they’ll feel.

Compare these two descriptions for the same rafting trip:

Version A: “This Class II-III section of the New River runs approximately 5 miles through Grandview Canyon, with rapids rated up to Keeney Brothers (Class III+) at higher water levels.”

Version B: “You’ll spend about three hours on the water, taking in canyon views that most people only see from the rim. No paddling experience needed. Your guide handles the tricky parts, and dry bags are provided for phones and cameras.”

Version A is accurate. Version B books casual participants. The anatomy of a trip page that converts comes down largely to this shift: writing for the reader’s mental state at the moment of booking, not for the informed enthusiast who already knows what Class III means.

Specific things to include for casual participant conversion:

What gear is provided (casual participants worry about owning the right stuff)

What they’ll see or feel, not just what they’ll do

A brief, plain-language description of difficulty (one sentence, no jargon)

Who this trip is right for (and ideally, who it’s not right for)

That last point is counterintuitive. Saying “this trip isn’t right for people looking for intense whitewater” actually increases casual bookings. It signals that you understand your audience and have something specifically designed for them.

The content gap: educational vs. promotional

Core outdoorists need to be convinced to choose you over competitors. Casual participants often need to be convinced to do the activity at all. That’s a fundamentally different content job.

If someone is searching “is kayaking hard for beginners,” they’re not ready to compare your prices against your competitor’s. They’re in research mode, trying to answer a fear. Content that meets that fear directly, and honestly, converts browsers into first-time bookers. A post titled “what to expect on your first kayak tour” will draw different readers than “kayak tour guide New River Gorge.” Both are worth having.

The content that books trips vs. content that just gets clicks framework is useful here. Educational content for casual participants tends to have lower search volume but much higher purchase intent because it filters for people who’ve already decided to try the activity and are just looking for the right operator.

Topics that attract casual participants at the research stage:

• “What should I wear on a [activity] trip?”
• “Is [activity] safe for non-swimmers?”
• “What happens if I fall in?”
• “Can kids do [activity]?”
• “What does a [activity] trip cost?”

These aren’t glamorous topics. But someone searching “is whitewater rafting safe for beginners” is a much warmer lead than someone clicking on your “2025 New River Gorge rafting guide” from a generic search.

Social and visual signals that work for casual participants

The OIA data on participation demographics tells you something practical about visual content: the audience is broader than it used to be. More diverse, more multigenerational, more urban. If your website and Instagram show only fit, white, 30-something outdoorists, you’re visually excluding large portions of the casual participant segment.

This doesn’t require a production budget or a stock photo subscription. It requires a camera and a briefing to your guides: photograph guests who look happy and relaxed, not just guests who look athletic. That couple in their 50s laughing on the raft. The teenager on her first kayak. The group of friends from the city doing something outside for the first time. Those images convert casual participants because those participants see themselves in the photo.

User-generated content works particularly well here. Casual participants are more likely to be on their phones documenting the trip than core outdoorists who are focused on the experience. Encourage it. Tag them. Repost it. Their photos and short videos hit differently than anything you’ll produce yourself, because they carry authentic social proof for an audience that’s already relying on social signals to make decisions.

The accessibility signal matters just as much in text as in images. Review descriptions, captions, and inquiry emails for language that assumes knowledge. “What’s your shuttle preference?” assumes the person knows what a shuttle is. “Do you want the longer or shorter route?” they can answer. Small language choices signal whether your operation is built for first-timers or expects guests to arrive pre-educated. Casual participants notice, even when they can’t name what they noticed.

Pricing and packaging for the casual market

Casual participants are often price-conscious in a specific way: they don’t know what the “right” price is, so they’re sensitive to unexplained costs. A trip that costs $149 with a clearly explained gear-included, guide-included breakdown will convert better than a $129 trip with a confusing list of add-ons.

Bundle everything you can. Gear rental, guides, transportation from a common meeting point, basic photos. The more you can roll into a simple flat price, the lower the perceived risk for someone who’s never done this before. First-timers aren’t shopping for the cheapest trip. They’re shopping for the most reassuring one.

A few outfitters have done well positioning a half-day intro trip as an explicit “try it” product, priced $20-30 lower than the standard trip, with even heavier beginner messaging. This isn’t discounting your product. It’s creating an entry point that captures people who wouldn’t have booked the standard trip at all. The retention math usually works: a casual participant who has a great experience once often becomes a regular.

One thing the outdoor market data makes clear: the spending gap between casual and active participants is narrow ($1,400 vs. $1,600 annually) and the volume is enormous. An outfitter that successfully converts even a fraction of casual searchers into first-time bookings is tapping a segment that outspent the core enthusiast category in aggregate by a factor of five. The math favors building for them.

After the trip: converting casuals to repeat customers

The OIA data shows that participation frequency dropped in 2024. The average American took five fewer outdoor trips per year compared to 2019. That’s not a demand problem. It’s a habit problem. People participate occasionally when the friction stays high. One job your post-trip communication can do is lower that friction for the next booking.

A simple email sequence after a casual participant’s trip does more to build a repeat customer than almost anything else: a thank-you note, their trip photos, and a soft offer to book again in a different season or try a slightly more advanced version. The post-trip email sequence doesn’t need to be elaborate. Three emails over 30 days is enough to stay present with someone who had a genuinely good time and is now, for the first time, thinking of themselves as someone who does this kind of thing.

That’s the real opportunity with casual participants. They don’t come in with a strong outdoor identity. But they leave with a memory of a good day, and with your name attached to it. If you stay in touch, you can help them build an identity. And once someone thinks of themselves as “someone who does kayaking” rather than “someone who tried kayaking once,” your retention problem solves itself.

Start there: pull up your current homepage header. If it doesn’t speak to someone doing outdoor recreation for the first or second time, rewrite it this week.