Analysis of Ontario Parks Statistics 2004-2017

2019 Update on Ontario Parks Statistics

Greetings fellow campers,

It's been a while since I last reviewed the state of camping in Ontario through their annual parks statistics report - nearly 4 years actually. A lot has happened in that time - Canada turned 150 years old, gas prices dropped and rose again, the Canadian dollar has dropped substantially in value relative to the US dollar, and Ontario recently elected a new goverment. While it's too soon to analyse the data on the last point, we can look at the implications of the other two.

Last time I had a look, the number of park visitors had been in decline for a decade, dropping from 10.5 million visitors in 2005 to 8.5 million in 2014, a stunning 19% decline in the number of visitors at a time when Ontario's population had risen by 11% (2006-2016). Looking at the latest data, this trend has reversed somewhat, which is good news. In fact, park visitation reached recent highs over this period, topping out at over 10.5 million once again in 2016 (I should reiterate though, this is drawing from a larger population, so if the number of out-of-province visitors has stayed constant, the proportion of people who are camping is still in decline).

As I mentioned, gas prices and the Canadian dollar have declined in that period (though gas prices have seen an increase lately), making visits from American tourists potentially more attractive in recent years. The data available in the 2014 report suggested this may have been a factor with the share of US visitors dropping from 11% to 6% between 2006 and 2011 (the only two years where data were available). Looking at the figure above, there does seem to be some sort of inverse relationship here, with annual visitors seeming to dip/stagnate when gas prices rise (to some degree), but the drop in gas prices in 2009 did not provide a bump in visitors. As well, I ran a regression analysis with visitors and gas prices (I know, a very limited data set) and for what it's worth neither seem to be statistically significant for the park system as a whole.

The number of camping nights per camper had also dropped in 2014, by around 10-15%, from around 3.7-3.8 to 3.3. So it seemed that campers are staying for shorter amounts of time. Unfortunately, this trend has not reversed much, with the average stay per camper still hovering at around 3.2 in 2017, down from the recent high of 3.8 in 2006.

A number of factors could be at play here, including increased nightly camping fees over that time period. For example, regular "premium" camping fees for an electrical site wish showers was $33/night in 2005, incl GST. In 2017, it was $51.13/night, incl HST. If you adjust the $33 for inflation, it would have been $40.18 in 2017 - so that would give us roughly a 25% increase in nightly fees. I should also point out that GST was only 7%, while HST is 13%. It's not much better in the backcountry; in 2005, Bon Echo and Algonquin were $7.50 and $9, respectively - $10.17 and $12.43, in 2017; these represent increases under 15% after adjusting for inflation, but it's worth noting that these are per person fees. In Algonquin, you can have up to 9 people on a site, so that would be a nightly fee of $112 for a fully-occupied backcountry site in the province's more popular interior camping park!

I should state that this average length calculation I've made may be flawed; when looking at the definitions provided in the park statistics, we can see that "average length" and "campers" data seem to contain a circular reference to one another; determining which is derived from the other isn't clear from their glossary (at least, I think we can say for certain that "camper nights" is taken from Ontario Parks gate data and I would guess that "campers" is too). I would expect this to be independent of factors such as gas prices or the CAD, and would have expected that that those campers who make the time and effort to visit a park would want to stay longer due to all that congestion and those high gas prices.

The number of campers per visitor, which might indicate levels of interest in camping, have stayed pretty steady - a very slight dip in the years between 2005-2012, but recovering back to 2004 levels by 2017. This suggests that overall interest in camping is stable, and day visitors are continuing to do what they do, with no new motivation to stay the night.

A topic that I didn't touch upon during my previous analysis was the backcountry, which is odd, because I love the backcountry. Personally, I have hope that if Ontario Parks see increasing interest in backcountry camping, they'll increase the total number of sites available by preserving and developing more crown land for this purpose. So I've decided to dig into the data this time to see how visitation has changed in this period. Ontario Parks doesn't do regional summary statistics in the annual parks stats report (which can be obtained if you ask very nicely to the folks at the MNRF), so all of the data needed to be entered manually into a spreadsheet. I only have the reports from 2010-2017 available, but hopefully that provides an interesting picture nonetheless.

I think that the results are indeed interesting. Looking at the overall picture, you can see that there has been an impressive increase in interior camping nights. If you simply compare 2017 to 2010, some shocking figures result; 25% increase province wide, 34% increase in NE Ontario, and a shocking 200% increase in SE Ontario. However, the numbers vary year-to-year; I would guess this has something to do with weather, perhaps particularly around long weekends, but this is just a guess without more detailed data. If you just take the 3 year averages around 2010-12 and 2015-17, you get more plausible sounding increases of 15% province wide, 9% increase in Algonquin, 80% increase in SE, and 22% in the NE. The only alarming figure is a 4% drop in backcountry camper nights in the NW. However, since there are just so many opportunities up there for crown land camping (free!), it could just be that any increases in interior camping are occurring outside of the parks system.

The overall changes in interior camping activity could mean that people are staying longer, more people are staying in the backcountry, or both. Ontario Parks doesn't publish data on the number of interior campers per park or per region (just camper nights), so we can't say for sure. But what we can say for sure is that this is more revenue for Ontario Parks from interior camping. Of course, over 50% of all these camper nights (270,000 in 2017) are spent in Algonquin park. Just for a point of reference, there are 1900 interior sites in Algonquin - "only" 25% of all the interior sites in operating parks. So yes, it can be said that Algonquin received a disproportionate share of the Parks system's backcountry revenue. But given its location within a 3 hour drive of the bulk of the province's 13 million people, this makes sense, especially if you think all rocks/trees/lakes look the same.

A few other points - while Algonquin is certainly an interior camping behemoth, there has only been a 9% increase in camper nights (on the order of population growth in that time). The NE, on the other hand, has seen a 22% increase, while SE Ontario has seen a 80% increase in interior camper nights. This SE growth is a phenomenal increase, even once you take into account that half of this increase is attributable to the switch of Kawartha Highlands from non-operating (free to use) park to operating park. I take this to be a positive story about increased interest in backcountry camping that can be reached within a day's drive and I hope that we can find more crown sites that can be developed for Provincial Parks.

I could go on with more analysis but I'll stop there. I'd love to hear from you if you'd like to see more analysis, fellow camping quants. I could do some analysis on individual parks, engagement with activities...anything you might be interested in, just ask and I'll see if I can tinker with the data. I might even do it if I don't hear from you, I'm that much of a camping nerd. Enjoy the rest of the summer!