InsideOutdoor | SPRING 2022 30 With reservable campgrounds across the country at or near capacities for the past few camping seasons, a significant number of campers are pushing deeper into forests to find their camping experience, suggest data from camping reservation service Dyrt. Campers told Dyrt it was nearly three times more difficult to find bookable campgrounds in 2021 than in years prior, while nearly half of all campers in the U.S. reported difficulty finding available campsites the last camping season, with western regions being the most difficult. Not to be deterred from scratching their outdoor itch, “Campers met the campground shortage head-on, expanding into dispersed camping,” said executives at Dyrt, whose members went dispersed camping twice as often in 2021 as they did in 2020. All the while, the four most saved campgrounds on the Dyrt platform in 2021 were all dispersed campgrounds, where campers are free to camp anywhere within certain boundaries, said the company. And among the many campers who said they had tried a new form of camping in 2021, dispersed camping, at 23 percent, was second only to camping in a camper van (35 percent) among the several types of camping in the survey, including camping for the first time in an RV, which came in at 22 percent (see chart). Assuming we are not about to experience a noticeable increase in the inventory of developed campgrounds, either public or private, Dyrt’s findings would seem to suggest there is an opportunity for innovation and items The Drive to Disperse At-capacity campgrounds have created a boom in dispersed campers By Martin Vilaboy Image courtesy Dometic
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTg4Njc=