Camping Themes and Camping Demographics

Camping is the top outdoor vacation activity in America. Camping serves a wide variety of causes and purposes – family bonding, stress reduction, or just a great way to have a wonderful time outdoors and experience the elements in all their glory.

Camping is very alluring, even for the first-timer – of the one third of U.S. adults that have gone on a camping vacation over a five year period, only 6% said camping is not for them. This means that camping as an outdoor activity or recreation has a potentially 94% retention rate. Considering what has to go into planning a camping trip, this is a great figure.

Camping is also big business. From the manufacture and sale of camping equipment, the establishment and maintenance of camping sites, camping adds value to the economy at several stages. It is also a gateway recreation to other outdoor activities such as hiking, boating, and biking.

The demographics for camping vacationers are also interesting. Camping vacationers tend to be married with children at home, with an average age of 37. The median household income of campers is around $43,000.00. What this means is that camping is not prone to getting stagnant – the demographics are driving it to be highly stable in growth as the children get more and more exposed to this activity.

Then there are the different camping styles or some may say camping types. Basically these types or styles revolve around five basic themes:

1. The cabin camper. This is a hybrid of indoors/outdoors where the camper stays mainly in a cabin or RV but still have some limited exposure to the outdoors through short hikes or even a one night sleep out. They may have some type of boat attached to their RV or even bikes. Some may scoff at this type of camping as it really does not get into the outdoor life that much.

2. The second camping theme is similar to the one above but the main difference here is that the RV becomes the main sleeping place and affords more mobility so the camper does not stay in one place too long. This type of camping can be enhanced by boating, hiking or biking, or even hunting.

3. The third theme is basically the most popular and this is where instead of a RV, the family vehicle is used and people actually sleep outdoors in tents and gather around camp sites. Again, this theme allows for other activities such as boating, hiking, biking, and hunting.

4. The fourth theme is one of the more extreme ones and it is backpacking. Instead of a RV or the family car, your main mode of transportation is walking and hauling everything you need for the camp on your back. This camping theme really restricts your activity and so you are more likely to be doing pure camping due to the level of manual effort involved in just the transportation element.

5. The fifth camping theme is a takeoff of the fourth, but is even more extreme. It involves backpacking but instead of camping at a predetermined destination, the goal is to move start from point A and finish up at point B while enjoying several camping sites in between. This can involve distances that take you across states or even borders and is really meant to be taken on by the physically fit.

So there you have it – different camping themes and a brief look at who are into camping.

Happy camping.