Marketing outdoor recreation to women: the majority for the first time
Women crossed 50% of all outdoor recreation participants for the first time in 2023. If you run a rafting company, a hiking guide service, a kayak rental, or any outdoor recreation business, that shift has direct implications for how you market. Most operators haven’t adjusted at all.
The Outdoor Industry Association’s 2024 report put it plainly: 51.9% of American women participated in outdoor recreation in 2023. By 2024, that number reached 53%. The industry added 20 million female participants since 2015. These aren’t casual conversions from yoga to paddleboarding - the wave has been building for a decade, and it’s not stopping.
In practical terms: the average person considering booking your trip is now more likely to be a woman than a man. Your website copy, your photos, your review strategy, your guided experience design - if none of that has changed since 2018, you’re marketing to a customer base that no longer exists.
Understand who’s actually booking trips
The OIA segments outdoor participants into three rough categories: people who’ve shown interest but haven’t gone yet (call them first-timers considering the leap), occasional participants who go once or twice a year, and regulars who plan their calendars around activity.
The fastest-growing group is in the middle. Women who tried their first kayak tour or day hike during the pandemic years and liked it - but haven’t yet made outdoor recreation a regular part of their lives. They’re not first-timers anymore, but they’re not loyalists either. They need a reason to choose you, and they need to feel like the experience was built with someone like them in mind.
In 2023, 7.7 million Americans tried at least one outdoor recreation activity for the first time. A significant share of those were women. A significant share of those will book again - with someone. The question is who.
What women actually say keeps them from booking
Safety comes up first. Research on women’s outdoor recreation barriers consistently identifies fear - physical safety in remote settings, fear of harassment, fear of something going wrong far from help - as the primary deterrent. That fear isn’t irrational. Outdoor activities happen in secluded places with people you don’t know, and the industry has historically done a poor job addressing that.
Lack of companions is the second most common barrier. Women who want to try whitewater rafting or a multi-day canoe trip often can’t find someone to go with. This is a product design problem as much as a marketing problem.
Lack of role models is third. When your website photos show nothing but groups of athletic men in their 30s, you’re implicitly telling everyone else this isn’t for them.
Gear and cost come up too - the intimidation of not knowing what equipment is needed, or thinking the barrier to entry is higher than it is.
The good news: all of these are addressable. The operators who address them get the bookings.
Write copy that removes the intimidation, not just the price
Most outdoor recreation websites solve the cost barrier (prices are right there) and ignore everything else. We see this constantly. That’s backwards.
A first-time woman booking a kayak tour doesn’t need to know you’re the cheapest. She needs to know she won’t be the only beginner. She needs to know your guides have worked with people who’ve never paddled before. She needs to know what to wear, where to park, what to bring, and that the experience won’t be embarrassing.
That’s what your website copy should do. A “What to Expect” page is one of the highest-ROI pieces of content on any outdoor operator’s site - it directly addresses the fear-of-the-unknown that stops first-timers from clicking Book. Write one. Make it specific. Show a first-timer’s experience from parking lot to post-trip. Most operators don’t have this page, which is remarkable given how much work it does.
Testimonials from women - especially first-timers - carry more conversion weight with this audience than almost anything else. A review that says “I’d never been on a river and my guide made me feel completely safe” is worth more than ten five-star ratings that don’t say anything.
The photography problem is real
The North Face’s “She Moves Mountains” campaign in 2018 generated 275 million in global reach and a 25% increase in women’s product sales. The core insight wasn’t complicated: show women in outdoor settings, doing outdoor things, looking like they belong there.
Most outdoor operators do the opposite. Stock photography of shredding athletes. Guides who are all male. Group shots where women appear as an afterthought in the back row.
This is a solvable problem, and it doesn’t require a campaign budget. Book a two-hour photo shoot with your next mixed-gender group. Get shots of women guiding, leading, navigating, looking competent. Get shots of beginners looking happy, not just pros looking extreme. Use real guest photos whenever possible - a candid shot from an actual trip beats a polished stock image every time.
For guidance on what kinds of images actually drive bookings versus what just looks nice, real photos outperform stock on outdoor websites in almost every test we’ve run. The gap isn’t small.
Group experiences and community programs convert better
Here’s something that rarely shows up in outdoor marketing advice: women who find companions through an operator become loyal customers at a much higher rate than those who show up with their own group.
SheJumps has created over 36,000 opportunities for girls and women in outdoor activities since 2007, entirely through community-based programming. REI’s Force of Nature initiative hosted women-specific retreats and events that influenced not just bookings but the broader product strategy of competitors like Osprey and Arc’teryx.
You don’t need nonprofit scale to apply this. You need a “Women’s Intro Day” or a “Solo Female Paddlers” trip once a quarter. You need a Facebook group or email thread where past participants can connect. Tough Cutie built a following with nothing more than an Instagram series called “Women on Wednesday” that featured quotes from female outdoor enthusiasts.
The business case writes itself: a woman who makes friends on your trip will book again, refer her friends, and leave you a detailed review. Community is your cheapest marketing channel.
Segmenting your email list to communicate differently with women who’ve booked solo versus women who’ve booked in groups versus first-timers is one way to make this work at scale. Segmenting your email list by participant type is worth doing for a lot of reasons, and this is one of them.
Review strategy for the female-majority customer
Reviews from women convert women. This is not complicated, but most operators don’t think about it in terms of who they’re asking for reviews or what they’re asking them to write about.
After a trip with a strong female presence, send your follow-up email within 24 hours. Ask specifically: “How was the experience for you as a first-timer?” or “Was there anything we could have done to make you feel more prepared?” Those prompts tend to generate reviews that speak to the safety, accessibility, and welcome-factor questions that other potential customers are searching for.
Your Google Business Profile and TripAdvisor listing should show a mix of voices. If your last 20 reviews are all from men in their 40s and 50s, women looking at that profile will notice - and they’ll keep scrolling. Getting more Google reviews from your actual customer base means asking at the right time with the right prompt. Timing matters after emotionally positive experiences, which guided outdoor trips produce reliably. Don’t wait a week to send the follow-up. Do it the next morning.
If you want to understand why micro-influencers who are women or write for female outdoor audiences punch above their weight in this segment, working with micro-influencers in outdoor recreation is worth understanding before you spend anything on paid reach.
What to actually change this month
Start with the audit. Pull up your website on your phone and look at the homepage photo. Who’s in it? Read your trip description. Does it say anything about first-timers being welcome, or does it assume everyone already knows what they’re doing? Check your last ten reviews. Do they reflect your actual customer base?
If any of those are wrong, fix the easiest one first. Replace the hero image with one that includes women. Add a single line to your trip description: “No experience necessary - we’ve guided thousands of first-timers.” Add a testimonial from a woman who’d never done this before and loved it.
Then look at your trip calendar. Is there a single offering designed with the solo-woman-first-timer in mind? A women’s beginner day, a small-group intro paddle, an all-women’s guided hike? If not, you’re leaving money on the table. Online booking now accounts for nearly 55% of total outdoor gear rental revenue, and the people driving that growth are exactly the demographic you’re underserving.
The operators who will win the next five years of outdoor recreation growth are the ones who understand that the majority has shifted. The audience that grew by 20 million over a decade isn’t going away. They’re just waiting to book with someone who made them feel like they were expected.
