Highlighting the sustainable side of outdoor activities in travel content

The travel industry does have an over tendency to compartmentalize things into sectors. Family and food tourism; budget and beach; sustainable or cultural. In our view, however, the pillars of sustainability can uphold all these sectors, and more. We also recognize that the people who built these pillars over the years have, in many destinations around the world, been people who love the outdoors and, most importantly, people who want nothing more than to share the love with others. 

Share the love in stories

In sustainable tourism content, we salute the expert guides of outdoor and adventure tourism, and not only recognize their commitment to change, but are also direct travelers in their direction. It’s time to say hello to the hikers, mountain bikers, outdoor swimmers, sea kayakers and cross country skiers who have been leading on sustainable and incredibly cool tourism for years now. We all know that if you get a good adventure tourism guide who is connected with and can communicate about nature, sustainability and biodiversity, it’s catching - and travelers want to catch some of their natural chutzpah. And if you throw them the right content, they will be in a much stronger position to catch it. 

“I think the dream of a mountain bike destination has finally come.” - Dave Hughes, Carrabassett Region NEMBA, a non-profit organization dedicated to the building and maintenance of a sustainable mountain bike trail network in Carrabassett Valley and surrounding areas. 

Layer up your content during the shoulder season

There are many hardy adventurers who run at dawn or cycle at sunset all year round, but there are other travelers who might need a bit more gentle persuasion to venture outdoors when the temperatures dip. Or when the autumn mists mean adding a layer or two. In order to ease people from their homes and back out onto the hills, the shoulder season is a great time to also layer up in terms of content. Sustainable outdoorsiness doesn’t have to be seasonal, with the likes of kayaking, trail running, climbing and winter walking just some of the shoulder season offerings you can create content about. You just need to combine them with saunas, steaming hot local food and wood-burning hot tubs and you are onto a winter warming winner. Check out this Visit Finland post, 5 Reasons to Run in Finland, with its autumnal and springtime images for a great example of evergreen content. 

“Here in Georgia, my grandmother, Helen, was a skydiver back in the sixties. She was a central motivation of my outdoor experience, and a huge inspiration for me to do something different.” - Alex Iskandarov, tandem paragliding pilot, Georgian Paragliding Federation. 

Make your outdoor travel content accessible to all

Thanks to a much needed change in social attitudes, inclusion laws and important international events such as Paralympics, Special Olympics and the Invictus Games, travelers with mobility and cognitive needs are venturing into new adventures. So, it’s important that tourism destinations recognize that in their content, not only for the accessible tourism sector generally, but also in outdoor travel content. It is possible and not uncommon that activity providers in your region go out of their way to encourage people with access needs onto the water, onto horseback, trekking or trail biking. For more information on this, see our article Putting accessible tourism at the heart of your travel content.

Photo from Flickr Commons - "2013-07-15-WaterSki" by Tampa VA is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Seek out the stewards

Many outdoor adventure guides and business owners take their responsibility as stewards of the land and seascapes where they live, work and play very seriously. Consequently, their stories of how they connect adventure with nature are worth telling. In tourism, you will often see destinations showing off what they consider to be their ‘prize’ guides at conferences, workshops and so on. However, there are always more experts out there with stories to share with travelers. We are grateful, for example, that we got to meet Bill Yeo in Maine, whom you can meet in our film below. This guy captures his destination perfectly, and if Bill doesn’t persuade visitors to embrace the outdoors, no one will. 

“I just really want to introduce kids to the outdoors more, and show them all the different things that I love. And I know that they are going to then develop into stewards themselves. Which I think is vital...and they’re going to be far less likely to be the people who are going to degrade it.“ - Bill Yeo, rural adventurer, Maine, USA.

Outdoor adventures as part of post-pandemic recovery

The outdoors sector has proven to be one of the most resilient in tourism during and after the global COVID-19 lockdown. There is an opportunity for rapid growth in this sector now, particularly for the domestic market, but also for other markets moving forward. By creating content focusing on outdoor activities that adhere to all the global guidelines for social distancing and safety, and featuring outdoor experts who are prepared to share adventures back out into the world again, it can only be a win-win. Confined, cramped spaces are out. Big, silent spaces and outdoor living is what it’s all about now. 

“Travel will likely be kickstarted by the less risk averse travellers and early adopters, from adventure travellers and backpackers to surfers and mountain climbers. Not only are these types of travellers more intrepid, but these niche verticals are usually about immersion in nature, staying active and visiting remote communities, and as such they do not trigger the same [COVID-19] fear of crowds.” - To recovery and beyond - The future of travel & tourism in the wake of COVID-19, World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), September 2020. 

Blue tourism

We wouldn’t go so far as to say that blue is the new green, but they are being seen together more and more often in the world of sustainable tourism. In many destinations, ‘blue tourism’ is becoming the new name for marine tourism, with destination management companies and government departments painting their products with a blue theme. So now is the time to think about your outdoor activity content going coastal. Read our article on Blue Tourism for more information. Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way is a fine example of coastal tourism and branding, with this delightful storytelling video below, by Tourism Ireland, capturing culture, coast and character. 

Night time tourism

Dark Sky Reserves, moonlight kayaking trips, pre-dawn treks and Northern Lights tourism are just a few outdoor activities that aren’t so much moving into the twilight zone but becoming beacons of sustainable tourism. It is also a growth area of tourism, and an important outdoor activity to bring to travelers’ attention. For example, research carried out in 2019 in the Colorado Plateau region, which encompasses parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah and is known for its dark, star-filled night skies, predicts that: “non-local tourists who value dark skies will spend $5.8bn over the next 10 years in the Colorado Plateau.”

“As a small Pacific island, Niueans migrated and found this little rock in the middle of the ocean, by journeying from the stars. So essentially the stars were our map and GPS. This was thousands of years ago and that is still intrinsically part of the way we manage our natural resources. We still depend very heavily on the sky, the stars and the moon cycles for our hunting - for our conservation methods. The Dark Sky is really quite a special thing to share.” - Coral Pasisi, President Tofia Niue