- I'd like to introduce our panelists here to share their perspectives.

First, we have Nathan Reigner.

He's Pennsylvania's first Director of Outdoor Recreation.

Katie Caputo also joins us.

She's the owner and founder of roambler.com, and she also volunteers as a river keeper.

And Chris Barrett is the Director of the Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau.

Thank you for joining us.

If you have questions, please ask at keystone@wvia.org.

Well, welcome, everyone.

Nathan, Katie, Chris, thanks for being here tonight.

I'm looking forward to this conversation.

Nathan, we're gonna have a chance to hear a lot about the business alliance that is starting up.

But I actually wanna start with Chris about, why is outdoor recreation so important?

And I know we've talked a little bit about how it's changed over the last few years.

- It's incredibly important because millions and millions of people are visiting the Commonwealth because of its outdoor beauty.

A number of major rivers, state and federal parks.

And during the pandemic, we noticed that folks were discovering and rediscovering outdoor recreation and looking at it in a totally different way.

The pandemic made people prioritize any type of vacations and recreation.

But as you might remember, there was a point in time when you could only engage in outdoor activities.

So, during that time period, people are like, wow, I really like being outside.

I like recreating on rivers, hiking, biking, whatever they were doing.

So, that kind of started it really.

- Wow.

What are some of your favorite things to promote in the Poconos and to take part in yourself?

- The answer is everything.

But I love the rivers, I love whitewater rafting, I love hiking and biking.

There's nothing like going in the top of a mountain and seeing that view so early in the morning.

It's just so refreshing.

And it's a real, it's a way, you know, especially if you wanna cleanse, digitally cleanse, it's just one of the best ways to really do it.

So it's, I love being outside.

I really do.

- Now, Katie, I know you share this passion and I wanna ask you to share a bit about, well, what draws you to the outdoors?

And let's talk a little bit about business innovation.

What kind of new businesses are forming to help people enjoy the outdoors, including yours?

- Yeah, so I was born and raised in Pennsylvania and I was lucky enough to grow up along the Susquehanna River.

So ever since I was a little girl, I have been like hiking, biking, kayaking, fishing, and exploring everything that Pennsylvania has to offer.

Now, I teach all of those things to my little boys and I'm really able to see why it's so important.

Innovation in Pennsylvania, well, there's roambler.com, a web-based platform designed to connect adventure seekers to local guides and mentors throughout the state of Pennsylvania.

I think in this day and age, technology is key to supporting this industry.

For many years, brick and mortar businesses have had a difficult time having success in the outdoor recreation industry, but technology allows people to guide in PA as a side hustle, so it doesn't have to be a full-time gig supporting them.

They can do it on the weekends or full-time as well.

- When Chris was talking about the changes in how we recreate, you know, choices that people started to make during the pandemic, it was a time of reflection.

It was a time of reconnection with the outdoors.

How does changes in work lead to things like roambler.com and how a local guide would find their way to that platform and find, well, not a full-time new job, but a new opportunity?

- Yeah, so I think what we know about Pennsylvania is that we have a massive outdoor workforce that is really untapped.

So people who have grown up recreating with skills in hiking, biking, kayaking, foraging, and boating have the knowledge and skills to share with others.

And now through technology, they're able to tap into the side hustles, like Roambler.

- I know we've talked a little bit about Roambler and a new wave of people and different people coming to appreciate the outdoors.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

How important is it for someone who, like yourself, hasn't grown up in a family that passed along those traditions, that culture, and also like, here's the secret fishing hall?

- Yeah.

- Okay, okay.

- How does technology level the playing field?

And talk about why it's important for everyone to have access to these experiences.

- Yeah, so I think what we see in a lot of the activities that we can do in the outdoors in Pennsylvania is that the people who have true, real access to them is because they've been passed down for generations in their families, they've been passed to them from friend to friend.

We do have a lot of amazing built infrastructure access to trail heads and boat launches in Pennsylvania.

But there are so many who still lack access because of many reasons.

Sometimes it's fears, sometimes it's because they didn't have those experiences passed down to them.

And what Roambler does is it opens up access to people, to people who are guiding and wanna share these things with others.

- Thank you.

Nathan, I know you're ready to jump in and build upon what Chris and Katie were talking about.

Do exactly that.

What's out there, why is it important, and, you know, tell us about your role in helping to bring this new outdoor alliance of businesses together.

- Yeah, sure thing.

Happy to.

Thank you very much for having me here.

So the role, we typically think of outdoor recreation as a nice day outside with our friends and family in a park, on a trail, maybe on a river fishing.

Outdoor recreation is that.

Outdoor recreation is also an industry in the Commonwealth.

$17 billion.

Katie hit the nail on the head.

164,000 jobs in our outdoor recreation industry in Pennsylvania.

and that excludes small business owners like Katie, it excludes contractors working in this space.

So the fact that outdoor recreation is an industry, like every other industry in the Commonwealth, is really a bit of a new awakening for us.

Another new awakening that we're have having is the understanding that the infrastructure and ecosystem of outdoor recreation goes well beyond just the trails and the parks, the boat ramps themselves.

It includes the gear and equipment, it includes the services that people provide, it includes the information available about where to go, when to go, what are the gems, and importantly, how do you package your outdoor recreation experience together with food and beverage, with lodging, with cultural experiences that make for residents, Pennsylvania communities, wonderful places to live, for new Pennsylvanians, attractive places to relocate, and for visitors, a destination that's gonna call them to return?

So all of these business connections, we're really just opening our eyes to them today and we gotta stand up supports for that industry like we support the agricultural industry, the technology industry, the healthcare industry, et cetera.

- Vital industry sector.

Great to be recognizing that, that it has always existed.

- And embedded in our small communities.

- It's part of Pennsylvania.

- Yes.

- So recognizing that it's always been here, we've always had these amazing natural amenities, resources, beauty of the outdoors in Pennsylvania, recognizing and starting to quantify the economic impact.

What do you hope that grows to.

What's, you know, five years from now?

A generation from now, Pennsylvania's outdoor recreation industry.

- Yep.

Couple of thoughts here.

So first of all, I wanna share that over the past eight years, growth and the contribution of outdoor recreation to Pennsylvania's GDP, that growth has been faster than the general growth of our gross domestic product in the Commonwealth.

So our outdoor industry is in fact a high-growth sector and one that it makes sense to lean into.

Looking into the future, however, I think we should focus less on raw magnitude, less on just growing in volume and more on growing in connectivity.

We've got a lot of businesses in Pennsylvania that are creating products, designing and manufacturing products.

Gilson Snow, Zippo, Case, Nittany Mountain Works, Organic Climbing, Journeyman Hammocks, Dutch work, like we can keep going.

We also have great outdoor experience providers, all of our skiers, all of our campgrounds, all of our guiding services.

And we have all of those connected arts, culture, food, beverage.

And I think our real opportunity for growth in Pennsylvania is knitting together business to business relationships among these very complimentary enterprises.

So that when a tourist dollar does come into the Commonwealth for outdoor recreation, we can pass it around among as many of our businesses as possible.

- Well, let's take a look at a video that I think brings together a lot of those points: how outdoor recreation can mean big business.

Unpaved is a gravel bike race that has been happening for the last seven years in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

Business owners and visitors shared what an event like this means for a community.