- [Announcer] Live from your public media studios, WVIA presents "Keystone Edition Business," a public affairs program that goes beyond the headlines to address issues in Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania.

This is "Keystone Edition Business."

And now, moderator, Steve Stumbris.

- Hi, I'm Steve Stumbris.

Pennsylvania is full of mountains, rivers, and other beautiful scenery.

All that natural beauty has plenty of opportunity for visitors to get out and enjoy.

The state is bringing about a new coalition of businesses that cater to those wanting to experience all the Keystone State has to offer.

WVIA news reporter, Sara Sento, introduces us to the new Pennsylvania Outdoor Business Alliance.

- [Sara] Outdoor recreation is a booming business in Pennsylvania with a major impact on local economies.

In 2023, outdoor recreation brought in over $14 billion to the state, supporting more than 150,000 jobs across the retail, hospitality, and guiding services industries.

That's part of why Governor Josh Shapiro launched the Office of Outdoor Recreation and the Pennsylvania Outdoor Business Alliance.

The alliance aims to foster collaboration among existing outdoor-oriented businesses, all with a goal to help Pennsylvania's small businesses compete on a national level.

The group highlights the state's vast natural resources and advocates for policies that help businesses thrive while protecting the landscapes.

The alliance is also promoting sustainable growth so that state parks and scenic trails are available for generations to come.

For more on the PA Outdoor Business Alliance and some local outdoor resources, head to wvia.org.

For "Keystone Edition Business," I'm Sara Sento, WVIA News.

- 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.

- So Unpaved is a really great event because we're getting national recognition in Central Pennsylvania for all of our amazing outdoor amenities.

Economically speaking, the Unpaved race in conjunction with the Lewisburg Fall Festival brings about $2 million into the economy of the region.

So, it's a huge event.

- We bring in roughly a thousand riders, of which only about 5% are from the local area.

- All right.

I'm Dave and the club I ride with is the Potawatomi Warriors, and we're based out of Pinkney, Michigan.

Lewisburg is new to us and it's a beautiful, quaint little town.

So, you know, we're here eating, drinking, residing, spending money in this town.

And we're not the only ones.

You look around, you see a lot of other people doing it.

- As a new business owner, Unpaved is a incredible opportunity for us to get exposure.

We just had our grand opening.

This is one of our busiest days yet and it was great to have cyclists from outta town kind of discover new business and really get us out there.

And our business, especially being an outdoor recreation, we're here to promote bicycling and it's great to be part of it and to team up with them.

Events like this are, I can't even quantify how important they are.

And it's great to have just for traffic and visitors and locals all out and enjoying businesses.

So it's, yeah, can't really replace it.

I've heard from a lot of other business owners how big this event is just between the hotels and AirBNBs being all filled up and all of our storefronts being filled up.

You can't really put a value on how much help it is to the local economy.

- [Crew Member] Standby.

- So some amazing sites and scenes from Downtown Lewisburg.

I was there actually while WVIA was connecting with some of the cyclists and local business owners, Amazing day for the downtown and for the businesses there, and not just the bike shop.

So, Chris, I wanted to ask you, Nathan referred to the cross industry connection.

Can you expand on that?

How outdoor recreation doesn't just build businesses who are catering directly to people in the outdoors, enjoying the outdoors, but boosts an economy and region more broadly than that?

- It certainly does.

So in the Pocono Mountains, we're four counties, Carbon, Monroe, Wayne and Pike.

About 30 million folks visit the Pocono Mountains yearly and it leaves behind about $4.7 billion in economic effect.

So tourism is a form of economic development, there's no question about it.

And for every dollar that's brought in through tourism, it generates up to five in additional spending.

And for our region specifically, 75% of the visitation is from New York.

So those are absolutely outside dollars that are coming into the state generating tax revenue.

So from our destination alone, this is just one, we generate $843 million in local, state and federal taxes.

And it proliferates all across.

Because when somebody comes and recreates on any one of our two rivers, for instance, you know, they'll have breakfast, lunch, dinner, they'll stay overnight.

That's a huge expenditure that our new dollars coming into the Commonwealth.

So it's absolutely a great form of economic development.

And I think what's really great is the Shapiro administration has really completely embraced that.

They've embraced the notion that tourism is a great, great form of economic development.

And I only think we're going to continue our trajectory upward because even in our destination as early as 2017, we saw $3.1 billion in total spending.

And as I noted, the past year in '24, it was $4.7 billion.

So it's on a trajectory upward.

And people enjoy recreating in Pennsylvania.

There's no question.

- Visitors spending so vital, that influx of new money into a community can drive an economy.

Nathan, I wanna go back to the connectivity across the community.

Chris, build on that a little bit, like the connections across local people enjoy the outdoors in their communities, too.

- They do.

And we've seen a lot of businesses open completely centered around recreation.

So we have whitewater rafters in a number of our destinations on the river.

And, you know, you'll have folks who will come in and rent a raft, they'll have guides, all those types of things.

And then when they come back to the destination itself, there are small coffee shops.

I mean, it's a whole cottage industry that is revitalizing a lot of our towns in Pennsylvania that were built up during the Industrial Revolution, right?

And into the forties and fifties, they want the decline of coal, especially in our market.

You know, we saw a whole brand new vitalization with tourism.

So one only has to really look, for instance, to Jim Thorpe.

You know, Jim Thorpe was unfortunately by the eighties almost let's turn the light off the last person who's in Jim Thorpe.

So during the fall, for instance, in our visitor center, we had 30,000 people a week visiting our visitor center.

That's because of the river, that's because of fall leaves, that's because of hiking.

So there's no question that it's a huge component of our economy and there's a lot of cross connection of businesses that you normally wouldn't think would be there if it were not for tourism.

- Thanks.

So Katie, one of the things we saw in Sara Sento's opening was conservation.

Let's not just get out and enjoy the outdoors now, but let's make sure that future generations, your sons are able to enjoy this.

- Yes.

- Talk about why that's important and your own role volunteering in that regard.

- Oh, yes.

Well, I think it's extremely important.

And I'm a volunteer board member of the Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association as well as the Robert Porter Allen Natural Area.

The Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association does a lot of work to protect the health of the Susquehanna River.

The Robert Porter Allen Natural area is a 300-acre conservation recreation area with a 75-acre wetland.

And I love doing the volunteer work.

So I'm an entrepreneur involved in outdoor recreation.

I'm also a river keeper and involved with a recreation conservation project.

So I have a broad perspective of how it all ties together.

- Those two perspectives obviously overlap and reinforce each other.

What is the work of a river keeper?

- So the Middle Susquehanna river keeper is actually John Zaktansky.

He's our Executive Director.

And it involves a lot.

It involves connecting children to experience fishing and kayaking.

There's also a Vernal School environmental education partnership, which works together with many partners to connect people to nature, but also, at times, checking industry.

So industries that pollute the Susquehanna River and keeping them in check.

and observing things that they're doing.

- Well, thank you for that work.

Keep our Susquehanna beautiful.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, Nathan, talk about that.

Like, now blow this up to the state level.

Policy for outdoor recreation industry and your work towards conservation of these amenities for future generations.

- Yeah.

The question you're asking right now ties together perfectly what we've just been talking about.

Outdoor recreation is an industry.

We'd like to see it grow from a cottage to a substantially sized farmhouse or something like this.

- Very picturesque.

- Yeah.

Maybe Cabot.

This industry, all of the players, all of our producers of outdoor equipment, all of our providers of outdoor experiences, all of our professionals working in this space, they are not knit together.

They're not pooled together right now into an advocacy body that can speak on behalf of the outdoor industry that can bring the weight of industry to bear to counterbalance and contribute to conservation for the interest that Katie was just talking about.

And this is why Elevate, the business engagement program, you showed a poster of it earlier.

Elevatepaoutdoors.com is the website for this effort.

That's why this initiative is so important, to get the voices of business together and tell us, what do they need?

What do they need to address regulatory, permitting, and trade barriers to growth?

What do they need in terms of access to capital workforce development supports, entrepreneurial, technical supports, stimulus for innovation?

And importantly, how can outdoor businesses band together to grow the outdoor clientele, to bring more people into the outdoors and help preserve and develop the natural resources that are really the fertile ground from which the outdoor industry grows?

- Expand on that power of connections across business owners.

We know of other industry groups that advocate, that collaborate.

What are the opportunities for a business to join in and benefit?

- The basic principle is that we are all stronger together.

If our voices are speaking in unison, they will speak loud and they will speak clear.

Our outdoor industry, by and large, is a collection of small businesses distributed broadly across the Commonwealth, working in all kinds of different sectors.

That leads to a lot of creativity.

It leads to a lot of local impacts in the Commonwealth.

But without being tied together, this industry is not as visible as it needs to be in Harrisburg.

Our efforts here in the Commonwealth also mirror those occurring nationally with efforts to organize the outdoor industry at a national level in Washington DC.

So the hope of all of this is that for those of us in Harrisburg, we can hear the voices of outdoor businesses, understand their needs, be able to better serve them, and outdoor businesses themselves will have a peer network, will have a team that they can draw upon to grow.

- Yeah.

- Build on that, Katie.

- Yeah.

So I've been to many of the listening sessions that Nathan has hosted about the Office of Outdoor Recreation and the Outdoor Business Alliance.

And what I see is something really exciting happening.

Businesses who may usually compete are working together toward common goals.

And with Nathan as the facilitator of that, the industry can only grow by leaps and bounds.

- That's great.

So Chris, that cooperation across businesses that might otherwise view each other as competitors, do you have a perspective on that too?

- I totally agree with that, and I think Nathan's done a great job in the sector.

Because it's just part of the administration listening to a sector that's now beginning to grow, it's beginning to flourish.

And we need to continue to be able to make that flourish by giving the industry what it needs.

And I do agree that people are now seeing that as a common goal.

They're not competing with each other in the sense where they're all putting on their recreation hat to say, how do we grow this?

How do we make it better?

And that's kind of all what we really wanna do.

We all wanna row the boat in the same direction.

And it's happening, which is really great.

- You do that for a region and drawing people to the Poconos to enjoy the beauty, the outdoors there.

What will it be like for regions to also not see each other as competitors?

Okay, you can go to the Poconos one day, you can go out to the, you know, other as regions of the state.

How do you approach that?

Okay, there's a visitors bureau, there's a chamber here and there, bringing those organizations together, too.

What's that work like?

- Oh, fundamentally, if we grow the pie, then there's more pie for all of us.

That's the philosophy behind our work.

As an outdoor recreationist, I know that one weekend, I'm gonna come here to the Poconos, another weekend, I'm gonna go to the Southern Alleghenies.

And we move around, the diversity of experiences building a whole economy for Pennsylvania.

That's where we see the opportunity.

And I'm very heartened to hear that you feel that the Shapiro administration is in fact approaching this.

A big hallmark of our work together is fostering collaboration among agencies within the Commonwealth, outdoor recreation, tourism's a very tight collaboration, and trying to elevate the profile of Pennsylvania so that it's attractive for Pennsylvanians and for visitors.

- Well, Katie, going back to you, what's a favorite place to bring your boys?

What on Roambler do you think is something that people should definitely, what experience out there do you wanna make sure people take advantage of?

- Yeah, so my favorite thing to do with my boys is fish.

We love fishing and they love it as well.

Also kayaking.

Anything on the water, really - See you out there on the river?

- Yes, yes.

- I have to say one thing.

Katie said something really interesting when we were prepping for this segment.

She talked about relating all the things about the rivers that were really, really cool.

And what I loved about it was I was on the river at one time too and the guide there really introduced me to a whole new way of life and river life, which was awesome.

- Well, thank you so much, Chris, Katie, Nathan for being here tonight.

For more information on this topic, please visit wvia.org/keystonebusiness.

And remember, you can re-watch this episode on demand anytime online or on the WVIA app.

For "Keystone Edition," I'm Steve Stumbris.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat electronic music)