This business and marketing plan examines the Alabama Outdoor Adventure (AOA) Center, an outdoor recreation facility operating at Horseshoe Bend Military National Park in East Alabama. The paper outlines AOA's existing services — boating, horseback riding, and mountain bike rentals — and proposes the addition of a paratransit road tour service designed to serve visitors with mobility disabilities. Drawing on demographic trends, market segmentation research, and competitor analysis, the plan argues that this new service could generate a 30% revenue increase over FY2015 and expand the center's market share. The paper also details targeted communication and promotion strategies for reaching disability-constrained clientele.
The paper exemplifies applied marketing analysis: it moves systematically from product description to market need, segmentation, competitor review, and promotion strategy — mirroring the standard business plan structure taught in hospitality and tourism programs. The use of peer-reviewed sources (e.g., Williams et al., 2004; McAvoy et al., 2006) to validate the market opportunity is a strong academic technique that bridges scholarly evidence and real-world application.
The paper opens with an executive-style overview of the AOA Center before moving into an introduction covering leadership and location advantages. It then presents the proposed product (paratransit tour service), defines the target market through segmentation, assesses competitors, and closes with a multi-channel promotion plan. A brief conclusion summarizes the revenue and market-share objectives. This structure follows a conventional marketing plan format appropriate for an undergraduate tourism or hospitality course.
The adventure travel market has undergone rapid growth, accompanied by an enormous availability and variability of adventure recreational products. The center targets adventure-seeking travelers with active lifestyles, and the owners view this as a promising opportunity — particularly because of the increased emphasis on healthy and active living.
The center is co-owned by Sherry and Eddie Green. Mr. Green acts as president and Mrs. Green as his vice president. They both have first-hand experience in communication and management, and a combined fifteen years of professional education.
Apart from its innovative and experienced leadership, the AOA Center enjoys a number of other strengths, including being strategically located between the towns of Dadeville and New Site — both of which offer political, demographic, and economic environments favorable for outdoor adventure programs. Further, in just two years of operation, the AOA Center managed to build a strong reputation, particularly in regard to customer service. The owners recognize that in a budding industry such as this, where success is based on customer perceptions as much as on actual performance, client satisfaction is key.
From the very outset, the AOA Center was developed through the transformation of hypothetical ideas into real-life solutions capable of meeting the changing needs of clients. It all began in 2005 when Sherry Green, then a postgraduate student, undertook a project for a marketing class in which she developed a marketing and operations strategy for a venture that would provide mountain bikes on a rental basis to adventure-seeking travelers touring Horseshoe Bend National Park. Her husband, Eddie, saw this as a promising idea and immediately acted on it, transforming it into a real venture. Seven years later, what began as a local bike-rental operation with five mountain bikes and a computer in a one-room office has transformed into a nationally advertised outdoor recreational center with tour equipment, high-quality mountain bikes, twenty horses, and a warehouse at the heart of the State of Alabama.
The same determination and ambition that drove the center's founding also informed the owners' decision to offer paratransit road tour services. To most people, the creation of the National Park Service Special Programs and Populations Branch and the subsequent passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 were simply government measures to increase opportunities for persons with disabilities. For the owners of the AOA Center, however, these developments represented an opportunity to enable persons with disabilities to participate fully in outdoor recreation activities (EEOC, 2014; FHWA, 2014).
Persons with disabilities represent an emerging market often unable to enjoy the benefits of outdoor recreation, as their participation is constrained by — among other things — psychological barriers and mobility limitations (Williams, Vogelson, Green & Cordell, 2004). In researching the viability of their project, AOA's owners discovered that very little literature exists regarding the constraints and participation patterns of persons with disabilities in outdoor recreation activities. Based on their experience, they estimate that 5% of the park's annual visitors have some form of mobility disability. Such visitors are mostly limited to boat riding at the canyon, because all other areas are either too steep or too terraced for them to access. In an informal conversation with Mr. Green, a former customer — a 60-year-old disabled male — revealed that he stopped visiting the park because he was tired of engaging in the same activities repeatedly, unable to pursue the activities of his choice.
Currently, there are only three road tour providers serving the three-mile road at the park, and none specializes in the transportation of persons with disabilities. The available providers are often overwhelmed, and those who fail to make an advance booking with the superintendent struggle to secure tour services. For this reason, the AOA Center identified the need to provide paratransit road tour services.
Operating under the slogan "A Special Outdoor Experience for a Special Group," the paratransit tour vehicles will be designed to make the disabled client's park experience complete — featuring swing-out seats and fitted racks for mobility devices such as wheelchairs (Rosenbloom, 2007). Private vehicles will be made available to those persons unable to transfer from their mobility devices.
The paratransit road tour service will address the mobility needs of adventure-seeking clients constrained by disabilities, increasing their ability to experience the beauty of Horseshoe Bend beyond the canyon. For the broader American community, the service will serve as a benchmark for disability appreciation and reinforce the principle that providing opportunities for persons with disabilities begins at the individual level.
The primary objectives of the paratransit road tour service are a 30% increase in revenues over FY2015 and a 5% increase in market share.
AOA Center's market consists of approximately 10,000 adventure-seeking customers in the travel and recreation industries, including both clients with mobility disabilities and those without. The center currently enjoys approximately 12% of Horseshoe Bend National Park's client base, and the owners expect this figure to reach 17% by the end of FY2017.
The paratransit service targets customers with mobility disabilities. The segmentation process is grounded in a 2004 study by Williams and colleagues, who found that persons with disabilities are more likely to participate in archaeological site visits, nature studies, and boat-riding (canoeing) activities, because their participation in other activities is constrained by several key factors (p. 92). The most statistically significant of these factors were inadequate information, inadequate transportation and support systems, and cost limitations (Williams et al., 2004, p. 93).
Based on this framework, the persons-with-disability market has been divided into three groups: disabled persons constrained by the high costs of outdoor activity; disabled persons constrained by information inadequacies; and disabled persons constrained by inadequate transportation and support systems. It is estimated that each segment represents approximately one-third of the total persons-with-disability market.
The paratransit road tour service will target all three segments of the persons-with-disabilities market, although it will focus initially on clients constrained by inadequate transportation and support systems and those constrained by information inadequacies. Once the project has gained sufficient momentum to yield economies of scale, its scope will be expanded to cover the segment of disabled clients constrained by cost — a goal the owners expect to achieve within the next two years. The information-constrained segment will be reached through more inclusive registration processes and an intensive promotion program (discussed in the "Communication and Promotion Strategies" section), while the cost-constrained clientele will benefit in the long run from lower service costs.
The paratransit road tour service is expected to bring increased ease of use and functionality for the targeted group. To date, AOA has successfully converted numerous customers from competitive services, and currently more than 50% of customers are repeat clients. Newcomers rely primarily on magazine advertisements and word-of-mouth referrals.
Persons with disabilities deserve a chance to engage in their preferred outdoor recreational activities (McAvoy et al., 2006, p. 24). The current system, unfortunately, does not consistently provide this — at least it has not done so throughout the seven years of operations at Horseshoe Bend (Smith et al., 2011, p. 76). AOA's paratransit road tour service is intended to address this gap directly.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of persons aged 65 and over grew by approximately 1,000% between 1900 and 2008 — from 3 million to 39 million (Aging Statistics, 2010, p. 2). It is projected that by 2030, this older population will have doubled to 70 million, representing more than 20% of the total American population (Aging Statistics, 2010). This trend is largely attributable to the aging of the Baby Boomer population — the more than 70 million people born in the U.S. between 1945 and 1965. This generation currently represents one-third of the U.S. population, and as they enter the 65-plus age bracket, the country can expect an unprecedented increase in the proportion of elderly persons. As Chappell and Cooke (2010) point out, the prevalence of mobility disabilities associated with aging is expected to grow at a rate nearly proportional to that of the aging population.
The Alabama Outdoor Adventure Center offers boating services, horseback riding, and mountain bike rental services at Horseshoe Bend Military National Park. It currently controls 12% of the market share, and the owners believe that if the paratransit road tour program — designed to serve the growing number of persons with disabilities visiting the park — is properly implemented, it would meaningfully boost the facility's revenue stream and strengthen its market position.
Aging Stats. (2010). Population. Aging Stats. Retrieved 24 October 2014 from
Chappell, N. & Cooke, H. A. (2010). Age-related disabilities: Aging and quality of life. In J. Stone & M. Blouin (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Rehabilitation. Retrieved 24 October 2014 from
EEOC. (2014). The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. EEOC. Retrieved 24 October 2014 from
FHWA. (2014). Chapter 1 — Disability rights legislation and accessibility guidelines and standards in the United States. Federal Highway Administration. Retrieved 24 October 2014 from http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/bicycle_pedestrian/publications/sidewalks/chap1.cfm
McAvoy, L., Holman, T., Goldenberg, M. & Klenosky, D. (2006). Wilderness and persons with disabilities: Transferring the benefits to everyday life. International Journal of Wilderness, 12(2), 23–35.
Rosenbloom, M. (2007). Transportation patterns and problems of people with disabilities. In M. Field & A. Jette (Eds.), The Future of Disability in America. Retrieved 24 October 2014 from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11420/
Smith, R. W., Austin, D. R., Kennedy, D. W., Lee, Y. & Hutchison, P. (2011). Inclusive and special recreation facilities for persons with disabilities (5th ed.). Urbana, IL: Sagamore Publishing.
Williams, R., Vogelson, H., Green, G. & Cordell, K. (2004). Outdoor recreation participation of people with disabilities: Selected results of the National Survey of Recreation and the Environment. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, 22(2), 85–101.
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