Diversity in outdoor recreation: the marketing opportunity most businesses miss

The fastest-growing segments in outdoor recreation aren’t who most outfitters think. Black participation in outdoor activities jumped 12.8% in 2024. Hispanic participation grew 11.8% in the same year. Meanwhile, most outdoor businesses still market to the same audience they’ve targeted for decades.

That disconnect is costing you bookings.

This article shows you how to reach the audiences driving growth in outdoor recreation, and why the operators who figure this out first will have a real advantage over the next five years.

The numbers you can’t ignore

The Outdoor Industry Association’s 2025 Participation Trends Report paints a clear picture. A record 181.1 million Americans participated in outdoor recreation in 2024, and the composition of that group is shifting fast. White non-Hispanic participants dropped from 69.7% of the participant base in 2023 to 66.9% in 2024. That’s not a blip. It’s a structural change.

Since 2019, 27.5 million new people have entered outdoor recreation. Seniors, young adults, and people of color led that wave. The LGBTQ+ community is now the most active adult cohort in outdoor recreation, according to the same OIA data.

Here’s what makes this a marketing problem, not just a demographic trend: Hispanic buying power in the U.S. exceeds $2.6 trillion. Black buying power sits at roughly $1.98 trillion. These communities are spending money on experiences. The question is whether they’re spending it with you.

Why your current marketing misses them

Most outdoor business websites feature the same imagery: fit white couples in their 30s paddling pristine rivers or hiking ridgelines. The copy assumes familiarity with gear, terminology, and outdoor norms. The booking flow is English-only.

None of that is hostile. But it sends a quiet signal to anyone who doesn’t see themselves reflected: this place wasn’t built for you.

Research from Resources for the Future found that while non-Hispanic white Americans make up about 63% of the U.S. population, they account for 88-95% of visitors to public lands. That gap doesn’t exist because people of color don’t want to be outside. It exists because of real barriers, including safety concerns, cost, transportation, lack of representation in marketing, and simple unfamiliarity with activities that no one in their family ever did.

Your website is either reducing those barriers or reinforcing them. There’s no neutral position.

Fix your photography first

This is the single highest-impact change you can make, and it costs almost nothing if you’re already running trips.

Start photographing your actual guests (with permission). If your guest base is already diverse, you have content gold sitting in your camera roll. If it isn’t, that’s a signal your marketing has been filtering people out.

A few specific moves that work. Ask guests from underrepresented backgrounds if you can feature their photos on your site and social media. Hire a local photographer from the community you want to reach for one shoot. Replace stock hero images with real photos from real trips, because conversion data consistently shows real imagery outperforms stock.

Outdoor Afro, a network of over 100 leaders organizing outdoor experiences for Black communities across the U.S., grew largely through the power of showing Black people joyfully outside. The lesson for your business: representation isn’t a checkbox. It’s a booking driver.

Write for first-timers, not just experienced outdoors people

A huge portion of the diverse audiences entering outdoor recreation are first-generation participants. They didn’t grow up camping or paddling. They don’t know what “Class III rapids” means or whether they need to bring their own life jacket.

Your trip descriptions should answer the questions a complete beginner would ask. What do I wear? What if I’ve never done this before? Is this safe for my kids? Will I look stupid?

That last one matters more than most operators realize. The fear of not belonging, of being the only person who doesn’t know what they’re doing, keeps people home. Your copy can either ease that fear or ignore it.

Practical steps: add a “first-timer?” section to every trip page. List exactly what’s provided and what to bring. Include a sentence like “about half our guests are trying this for the first time” if it’s true. Create a dedicated FAQ page addressing beginner concerns.

Consider language and cultural context

About 42 million people in the U.S. speak Spanish at home. If you operate in the Southwest, Florida, or any metro area, a meaningful percentage of your potential customers are more comfortable booking in Spanish.

You don’t need to translate your entire website overnight. Start with your most popular trip page and your booking confirmation emails. Latino Outdoors, an organization with over 45,000 Instagram followers, runs all their events in both English and Spanish and provides gear for participants. They’ve built one of the largest Latino outdoor communities in the country partly because they removed the language barrier.

For your business, even a bilingual trip description and a Spanish-language Google Business Profile can open a door that was closed before.

Cultural context matters beyond language, too. Family-oriented trip options appeal strongly to Hispanic and Black audiences, where outdoor activities are often multigenerational. A rafting company in West Virginia told us they doubled their group bookings in one season by creating a “family float” option at $45 per person with gear included, priced $20 below their standard half-day trip. If you offer family packages or group discounts, make those prominent on your site. If you don’t offer them yet, consider building one.

Rethink where and how you promote

If your entire marketing strategy runs through Instagram, fly fishing forums, and Google Ads targeting “kayaking near me,” you’re only reaching people who already self-identify as outdoor enthusiasts. That’s a shrinking share of the pie.

The audiences driving growth are finding outdoor activities through different channels. Community organizations, church groups, cultural centers, school programs, and word of mouth within tight-knit social networks. A 2024 survey from the OIA found that personal recommendations remain the top driver of trying a new outdoor activity, especially among first-time participants.

Think about where trust already exists in these communities and meet people there instead of expecting them to find you.

A few approaches worth testing. Partner with a local community group (Boys & Girls Club, a Latino cultural center, a historically Black college outdoor club) for a discounted group trip. Sponsor a community event that isn’t outdoor-specific but introduces your brand to new audiences. Work with micro-influencers who have authentic followings in underrepresented communities rather than the standard outdoor influencer with 50,000 followers and a Patagonia sponsorship.

The #DiversifyOutdoors movement on social media connects dozens of organizations working to make the outdoors more inclusive. Engaging with that community, genuinely, not performatively, puts your business in front of audiences your competitors aren’t reaching.

Do the work before the marketing

It’s not a single Instagram post during a heritage month. It’s not adding a stock photo of a diverse group to your homepage while changing nothing else. It’s not a mission statement that uses the word “welcoming” without any evidence to back it up.

Operators who treat diversity as a marketing campaign rather than an operational shift get called out for it, quickly and publicly. And they deserve to be.

Inclusive marketing works when it reflects real changes: staff training on cultural competency, gear available in extended sizes, pricing structures that don’t assume every guest has $200 to spend on a half-day excursion, and genuine relationships with communities you’re trying to serve.

REI donates to organizations serving underrepresented outdoor communities and hosts events designed to lower barriers to entry. Columbia offers gear up to 3X. These aren’t performative gestures. They’re product and operational decisions that the marketing then reflects.

You’re a smaller operation, so your version might be simpler. Maybe it’s a loaner gear program so first-timers don’t need to buy $300 worth of equipment before they know if they like kayaking. Maybe it’s a sliding-scale trip for a local community group once a month. Whatever it is, do the thing first, then talk about it.

The outdoor recreation participant base is getting more diverse every single year. That trend won’t reverse. Operators who build relationships with these growing audiences now, while competitors keep marketing the same way to the same people, will compound that advantage over years.

Your first step doesn’t need to be complicated. Audit your website imagery and about page this week. Count how many photos show people who aren’t white. Read your trip descriptions through the eyes of someone who has never set foot on a trail or in a boat. Ask a friend who isn’t an outdoors person to read your most popular trip page and tell you what confused them or made them hesitate. Fix the most obvious gaps.

Five years from now, outdoor recreation will look meaningfully different from what it looks like today. The participant base will be younger, more diverse, more urban, and less likely to have grown up in an outdoor family. Every year you wait to adjust your marketing is a year your competitors could be building the relationships and reputation that take time to earn.

The businesses that figure out inclusive marketing aren’t being generous. They’re being smart about where the growth is actually coming from.