For California State Parks Southern Division Operations Chief Brian Ketterer, parks are for the people and public good.
According to the latest U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) report, the outdoor recreation industry recorded $862 billion in gross economic output in 2021. The continued effort of state parks to provide access for people regardless of color, background, social status, gender identity and expression, and more is a significant factor in the industry’s success.
In an exclusive interview with Modern Campground, outdoor recreation industry experts Brian Ketterer, Southern Division operations chief of California State Parks, and Bill Bryan, vice president of Outdoor Recreation at Tyler Technologies, talked about how California State Parks is improving outdoor recreation access.
This year, California State Parks launched the California State Library Parks Pass. The pass allows California residents free day-use entry to over 200 participating state park units.
‘Eliminating barriers’
Bill Bryan, vice president of outdoor recreation at Tyler Technologies, a provider of outdoor recreation management solutions, underscored the importance of using technology to empower people to explore the great outdoors and to help make recreation easier on the end user and the rangers as well.
Bryan told Modern Campground how parks have come a little behind in the digital economy.
Tyler Technologies helps make outdoor recreation more accessible by providing solutions for California State Parks’ reservation and recreation system and deciphering data into usable analytics to establish a better guest experience.
According to Bryan, Tyler Technologies uses data and technology to understand who’s visiting parks, why people aren’t going to parks, and help make things easier for people to visit and access parks.
With California State Parks’ 17,000 pieces of overnight inventory, which includes campsites, group campsites, and cottages, and with the demand of over 68 million people, Tyler Technologies works to provide an efficient way for people to get online, find out information about parks and make reservations for overnight accommodations.
According to Bryan, there are a lot of barriers that keep people from visiting the outdoors.
Data from Tyler Technologies show that 61% of the people who checked out the park pass in the first three months of the program had never visited a California state park before because of the cost.
“One of them [barriers] is the cost associated with going to a state park. It’s not in everybody’s budget to take the whole family and pay whatever the entrance fee is at a park or maybe visit several parks,” Bryan said.
With the park pass initiative, California residents can visit over 200 different state park facilities for free.
California State Parks’ Brian Ketterer said that the initiative is seeing success in its first year with the release of additional 28,000 passes. Noting that 21% of the current user group is Hispanic, another 22% is Asian and over 60% of the people using the passes suggest that their household income is $60,000 or less.
The future of outdoor recreation
For both Ketterer and Bryan, outdoor recreation plays a significant role in everyone’s lives.
Ketterer believes outdoor recreation bonds people together.
“I think it’s one of the great places that somebody’s allowed to reflect, whether it’s in a city park, in the hustle and bustle of an urban area, just having that quiet, passive place to go, or whether it’s sitting amongst the redwood trees and just realizing how small and insignificant you are, simply a small part of California. And I think that’s, for me, that’s the importance of outdoor recreation,” Ketterer said.
Ketterer highlighted that parks are for people, for the public, and built for the public good.
“That means everybody should have an opportunity to experience that… We thrive based on how the public utilizes our parks, and I think that parks also tell a story and a history that needs to be shared with society.”
He also believes that the future of outdoor recreation will start with technology.
“To do something above and beyond, physically or mentally, I think are great ways that people will experience parks in the future. And I think again, we need to utilize technology, the systems that we have, the systems that we dream about, build those and use those that we can create a more diverse population using parks,” Ketterer told Modern Campground.
According to Bryan, while the industry has experienced significant growth, it still has a long way to go.
Bryan said the process of providing a recreation management system is a process of continuous improvement.
“Day in and day out, our goal is to make it easier for people to go to the park and easier for rangers to be rangers,” Bryan said.
Featured image from California State Parks.