Northern Wyoming News - Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years

WORLAND – In an unprecedented time of global change, whole sectors of industry in Wyoming, the U.S. and the world have taken a serious blow. What has been the impact on local outdoor recreation businesses?

According to the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable (ORR), a U.S.-based coalition of outdoor recreation trade associations and organizations, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a “catastrophic” impact on business. “We knew there have been tremendous impacts to our members and to the entire outdoor recreation industry, but our survey results show the traumatic impact on every sector and to the heart of this once thriving economic engine,” said Jessica Wahl, ORR’s executive director.

Compared to their peers in the rest of the country, have local camping- and recreational vehicle-oriented businesses felt an economic sting?

For some, the answer is “yes, definitely.” For others, not so much.

Wyoming is one of only seven states that did not require its residents to “stay home” or “shelter in place.” However, according to Google’s “COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports,” which use automatically-transmitted location data from all Android-based cellular phones, even folks in Wyoming and states that were not “locked down” have tended to stay close to home.

In the other 43 states, tendencies toward more staying at home and less travel for recreation or other purposes can be very pronounced indeed.

Making travel even less appealing, Wyoming, like many other states, required for some weeks that arriving visitors self-quarantine for a period of 14 days. According to Governor Mark Gordon’s April 29 Directive, this requirement in Wyoming expired on May 8.

All of these factors have led to painful economic repercussions at the local level, at least for some businesses.

“Yes, we’ve been hurting,” said Christina Calvert of the Fountain of Youth RV Park in Thermopolis. Calvert estimated that 50% of this summer’s Fountain of Youth reservations have been canceled. She noted, however, that most people canceling reservations said they would make reservations for next summer.

A spokeswoman for another privately owned RV park in the region also described a somber situation for her business, with only three reservations for the month of May, similar prospects for June and new summer cancellations coming in about every other day.

Surprisingly, the picture was very different in Ten Sleep. Sherry Seymour of the Ten Sleep RV Park says that business has actually been pretty good. “In April and the first part of May, we had a lot of Wyoming residents just wanting to get away for a day or two,” Seymour said. She noted that ongoing roadwork on two stretches of U.S. 16 between Worland and Ten Sleep may have been a factor in some travelers deciding to stop for the night in Ten Sleep. “And now that the out-of-staters don’t have the 14-day quarantine, that’s helping,” Seymour continued.

While acknowledging that a few summer reservations had been canceled, Seymour remained optimistic. “For the most part, we’re doing good,” Seymour said.

If COVID-19’s economic impact on local RV parks has varied, how has it been for businesses that actually sell camping trailers and other RVs? At Midway Auto & RV in Worland, RV sales have been excellent. “They are just flying out the door,” said Worland store manager Stevie Barry. “We’ve sold more campers this year than we’ve probably sold in the past 10 years,” Barry concluded.

People buying campers in Worland tend to live nearby, while those visiting local RV parks are generally coming from other places.

Given the chaos and uncertainty that seems to permeate all levels of discourse around the COVID-19 epidemic, its impact on many people’s livelihoods and most states’ restrictions on freedom to travel, it’s not hard to understand why local outdoor recreation businesses might be in for a world of hurt. It’s less clear why some local businesses are suffering while others are actually doing well.

Part of the answer may be that Wyoming people were not “locked down.”